Unbefitting Strains
by JadeLecter
Summary: She had heard stories, of course, of werewolves. But Remus was tall and gentle, and his eyes were light. He quoted Shakespeare and laughed lightly. Theirs is a love with fetters and chains binding and breaking, but Nymphadora Tonks knows that she would see it through. Tomorrow will come, and they will see the sun rise together, clasped like hands. A (canon) love story in 3 parts.
1. Love What She Once Feared To Look Upon

**I have been working on this for a couple of weeks, and 2/3 chapters are already written. However, I wanted to post it steadily, rather than quickly. This is Chapter 1 - it spans OOTP, and hence Chapters 2 and 3 will follow up with HBP and DH. I hope you give this a very good read, and I will appreciate any and all reviews as the community is small.**

 **This is my picturing of R/T by the way (art by me) – image/140978701349**

 **XXX**

Tonks was not terribly concerned about punctuality, nor did she give much bother toward walking straight, or crossing her legs when she sat. Such things were terribly _mum-_ ish, perhaps not the mums of her friends but certainly her mum. Her taste in men usually followed the same pattern of ignoring her mother's wishes too – they either had long hair or no hair, piercings, tattoos, or both, and on one memorably incident a bloke named Jay had driven his Harley into her parents' pond, frightening the poor koi fish and the waterlilies. She dumped him in a week, not for the pond incident but because she found out his name was actually Jedediah. All things considered, her taste was definitely edgy and somewhat flamboyant – which is why she honestly cannot believe she finds the broody Remus Lupin, who looked and acted (and spoke – _Merlin_ , his accent was horrendously posh) as if he'd been plucked from the pages of an Edwardian novel about the countryside, attractive.

For the first two weeks, it was fine. Or perhaps it hadn't been fine at all and she was just overexcited by the prospect of the Order of the Phoenix (her mum had been overjoyed which put a damper on things however) and didn't notice that she was on the warpath to a terribly odd attraction. She made a satisfactory fool of herself upon meeting the damn man after all;

"Hi! You're Sirius, right?" she'd bounded up to him and gripped his arms in the entrance corridor of Grimmauld Place. It was rather a familiar way to introduce yourself, but Tonks knew that the man was her cousin so it should be fine, or at least appropriate. "I'm your cousin Tonks, and I just wanted to let you know your troll's leg umbrella stand is a terrible piece of furniture, Sirius."

"Excuse me, but -" She should have _known_ the minute he opened his mouth that he wasn't Sirius, but of course she was too dense for that (as she berated herself later). "I'm not actually..."

"That umbrella holder thing, see?" She stirs him by the shoulder to point at the offending piece of furniture. "It's crooked, innit? _I_ think you'd be better off giving it to the pawnshop, or Mundungnus."

"I see. I'll consult Sirius about his obvious breach of interior design." The man smiled at her, and Tonks felt her heart slowly sink to her boots – Sirius didn't used to talk like he'd just come down from bloody Cambridge. She had made _some_ damn mistake or the other, literally two minutes after walking in.

"Cousin!" Sirius roared from the doorway to the dining room and kitchen, his arms out. Tonks immediately let go of the stranger and hugged Sirius – for of course this was Sirius with the loud voice and booming, dog-like laugh. She remembered him vaguely, from ever-too-wild games of tag and chase as a child, and also remembered how he convinced her to eat green apples till she bloated up for a week. He laughed then at how she fell off the tricycle he got her, and laughing he was now, already amused by how she mistook his friend for him, and clapped her on the shoulder.

"You thought _Remus_ was me?" Sirius grinned. "Of all the people in this house! I'd have even preferred Kreacher!"

"You would not have preferred anyone of the sort. I'm Remus Lupin. Nice to meet you, Miss Tonks, although you may have mistaken me for someone far less satisfactory and quite a bit less well-read." The man who was apparently Sirius' friend smiled at her and she only took a good look at him now, her heart now oozing all the way out of her boots to the marbled floor as it hits her how stupid she was to mistake _this_ fellow for Sirius. He was wearing a white Oxford shirt tucked in, and brown trousers patched at the hems. His hair was also decidedly as un-Sirius like as it was possible to get, thick and wavy brown but greying backward from the temples. He looked like a bloody teacher, Tonks wanted to hit herself in the forehead but also but the inside of her cheeks to stop from chortling.

"Pleasure to meet you too, mate," Tonks acquiesces sheepishly as they followed the still laughing Sirius into the dining hall.

And there it was, her fated and immensely glorious first meeting. After an introduction like that, she wouldn't have blamed Lupin if he'd ignored her, or took her for an idiot and refused to speak to her. The man was definitely odd though, she admits, with his habit of reading heavy Muggle literature during duller meetings and how he'd smoke carefully outside the window unlike Sirius who spread ashes anyhow all over the table and sofas, much to Molly's displeasure. The fortnight was a rather fun one, honestly, the 'missions' they'd been given were mainly stealth stuff she knew how to do at seventeen and they took up most of their time cleaning the two feet thick layer of dust over every bit of furniture in the house.

"Harry's written again, by the way." Ginny blurted out at the dining table during a lull in the conversation, Hermione's large cat in her arms. "Said he's bored and annoyed at the Dursleys."

"That makes a club of him and I then." Sirius said darkly.

"Hey, you've been reading my letters!" Ron's eyes widened, and he swallowed his mouthful of chicken. "Mum, tell Ginny to not touch my stuff!"

"You left your owl cage in _our_ room, Ron, it's only natural we wanted to see who the letters belonged to." Hermione retorted, laying down her cutlery neatly. "After all, it could have belonged to Professor Lupin. Or Professor Moody."

"I ain't done much teaching lark, mind you -" Moody growled, then winked at Ron who seemed to choke slightly. "But yeah, them letters coulda been mine."

"They're probably not Lupin's though. Prick's got all his priorities sorted." Sirius snorted, rising from the table and rummaging in the cupboards where an ominous clinking ensued from.

" _Prick_ is sitting right at the dinner table, where there are children present." Remus said, as Tonks laughed from her place beside him. "What on earth are you looking for anyway?"

Sirius emerged from the dusty cupboard, holding the telling shimmer of two Firewhisky bottles framing his dark hair and his canine grin. He shook them, and Mundungnus narrowed his eyes.

"Ain't that the whisky you bought off me last week? The strong stuff?"

"Yes, the very same." Sirius announced, flattening his hands on the table. "After Ginny mentioned that Harry was bored, I thought – hell, so am I. I've been in this muck for a month now. So I'm announcing a drinking competition – drink to the death. Or collapse. Winner gets the prize money, loser pays ten Galleons each. Who's in?"

"Me!" Fred and George clamored, causing Mrs. Weasley to inflate slightly, her cheeks reddening.

" _YOU TWO OFF TO BED NOW!"_ she commanded, her finger pointing straight upstairs.

"Well, we're watching at least." George compromised, sinking down into his chair and glaring at the company darkly. "Can't stop us."

"Ginny, Ron, Hermione. _Up_." Mrs. Weasley ignored the existence of her twin sons, and closed the door behind the others. "Sirius, _why_ you have to do this when you know there are children in the house I honestly cannot understand."

"Molly, he's been doing this since he was a child." Remus smiled.

"Remus, you're in, obviously." Sirius said carelessly.

"Excuse _me_?" The werewolf scoffed, and raised his eyebrows. "I'm not participating in your trash, Sirius."

"Remus is in." Sirius shrugs. "Dung? Nice, mate. Arthur?"

"Er," he shoots a nervous look at Molly. "I'll watch."

"Mad-Eye?"

"Fine."

"Tonks, you please?"

"Okay, but not too much. I need to Apparate back home." Tonks warned, accepting the shot glass Sirius handed her.

The game began smoothly, with all of them kicking back the Firewhisky at a speed that made Molly Weasley first frown, then raise her eyebrows in hesitant amazement. Tonks backed out first, the concentration involved in Apparating to her house prompting her to. She'd have drunk more and taken the Knight Bus, but yet another night of verbally assaulting Stan Shunpike wasn't in her capacity. Dung dropped out next, knowing the contents and concentration of whatever was in the Firewhisky, followed by Mad-Eye who proclaimed he had an unstable stomach, and promptly began snoring. Tonks laughed, loving this – seeing the precise, serious men unwind until only Sirius and Remus were left, slamming back the drinks with an increased fervor of competition.

"Shit, yoush can't be sherioush..." Sirius coughs, pouring out another shot. "You're like a fuckin' 'orse..."

"You started it," Remus winked at Tonks and knocked back another glass, his cheeks flushing with the alcohol.

"Fuck -" Sirius groans, dropping the bottle. "You win, bashtard."

"Cough up the Galleons. Ten from each of you." Remus stood up shakily, and stretched out his hand as Sirius collected his winnings. "Now, as the victor, I will exit this room in the manner I've entered it, unlike the rest of you. On my feet."

He walks out, swaying only slightly and Tonks absolutely marvels.

"Tell me your secret, Lupin." she stops him in the hallway. He was really rather close to her, she recalls later, and she could see the fine lines of his smile. "Go on, how come you can drink so much? Is it a werewolf thing?"

"Do you really want to know my secret?" Remus leans over her, smiling wider now and an arm propping him up against the wall behind Tonks. She feels something hot rise up in her and prays its only the whisky making a second trip. She can feel his breath on her shoulder.

"Yeah." She agrees. "What is it?"

He brings his mouth close to her ear until his lips touch her hair and she can feel his inhales in the pink strands. An inexplicable feeling in her wants to turn her cheek till it met his.

"I don't have ten Galleons, Tonks" he whispers, and laughs slightly before pushing himself away from the wall and going upstairs. Tonks knows this is possibly the trashiest, stupidest and most idiotic thing she has felt in her life – Remus Lupin had been serious, calculating, precise and... as he put it at their first meeting, well read, and her brain stored all this without having the courtesy to inform her. That's fine. If she'd begun to fancy him when he was reading his gravestone-books, or when he was drinking his black coffee or wearing his basically-Victorian clothes, she'd be fine. She'd even be amused. But it's the first time he gets drunk – or at least shows he can hold his liquor better than Sirius, that she feels as if she were twelve years old and eighteen year old Quidditch captain Bill Weasley had just ruffled her hair. It was honestly, the most common, vulgar thing she has done in her life – moving the time she streaked through Hogsmeade to the second spot.

XXX

"You look like a million Galleons, mate. Nice shirt." Sirius slunk into the room, a decanter made of sharp crystal in his hand as he folded into a chair and examined it gingerly. "You know this thing?"

"A decanter for alcohol?" Remus put down the book he was reading, Dostoevsky's _The Idiot._ "Well yes, I'm familiar with the appliance. This one looks quite costly too – where did you find it?"

"In bloody Kreacher's den!" Sirius exclaimed, putting the glass on the table next to the couch with a clunk. "The shithead doesn't even drink! I bet he's been using it to piss in!"

"Please save me from that mental image, I will be truly grateful to you." Remus muttered, and ran his hands through his hair. "Have the advance guard arrived here yet? To pick up Harry?"

"Nah, they've gone with Tonks to post that lawn care letter." Sirius snorted, pushing the decanter away from him with a cautious finger. "Haven't seen the glory of a post box apparently."

"I see. Ah, so Tonks will be... accompanying us on this rendezvous?" Remus ventured in a would-be casual voice. "I hadn't noticed."

"Yeah, she's coming." Sirius was possibly the densest person in the world, second only to his own alarming lack of tact. "Couldn't miss breaking glasses in the Muggle house, could she?"

"Ah." Remus clears his throat into his fist. "I see."

Sirius frowns, confused. There was some piece in this puzzle he was missing here, and although he dropped out of Arithmancy after around three classes and one broken-egg prank gone wrong – he knew when he missed a part in his working. After all, he'd known Remus for ten years of living in the same room as him, and another thirteen wondering where the hell he was and what he must be doing (apparently he went to Muggle university and studied while working in a bar and library, so quite predictable) so he though he'd know when his friend was acting strangely. His friend was certainly acting strange, Sirius decided, surveying Remus through hooded eyes slitted in suspicion. The new shirt, the way his hair was brushed loosely back in a manner resembling those bloody manor wizards, plus the way he refused to take part in any drinking games after that first one. Merlin, a grin blooms on Sirius' face, he thinks he's hit the nail on the head.

"So, Moony..." he stretched his legs out gleefully, cradling his secret and smirks as his friend looks up. "Have you...uh...powdered your nose and prepared a hearty cup of tea for your lady friend?"

"If that is supposed to be a mockery of my accent please desist." Remus puts down his book again and curses the day when the lord decided to give Sirius vocal chords. "What do you want?"

"Oh, just.. putting it out there that I _know_ your secret."

"Sirius..." Remus massaged his temples lightly with his fingertips. "You've known since we were twelve years old. You have managed to bring it up at least once a day. Yes, I am well aware that you _know_."

"Nope, not your furry secret." Sirius surveys his nails nonchalantly and decides to let the cat run screaming out of the box. "Just that one where I know you fancy Miss Nymphadora Tonks."

"Fancy her?" Remus' eyes widened and a faint flush crept up his cheeks. "Fancy her? Sirius, you're sorely mistaken, like every other time you 'try' to make a guess."

"Hm, well," Sirius hummed. "You should be nice to me, Moons. After all... she doesn't know about the time you -"

"Shut it."

"- and we really don't need a certain...ill-treated friend to accidentally let it slip, now." Sirius decided not to push it by mocking his friend's accent again and settled for a roguish wink.

"I do _not_ fancy her. I was meaning to tell you about this anyway, but of course you pop on the topic like icing on a cake that hasn't cooled yet." Remus brushed his hands through his hair again. "Now, remember our drinking game?"

"Hm, yes, the funeral of your willingness to participate in any more of them." Sirius said glumly. "I remember."

"Yes, well, the reason I don't want to participate is -"

"Because you have no money?"

"Yes, that too – but, er." He cleared his throat. "Well, later in the hallway, I was just – well, joking with her like I'd joke with you. Perhaps I got too close to her face, I _was_ quite drunk – Sirius, she really is... attractive. And she laughed – and well, I felt something dangerous. Since then... well, it's only been three weeks or so but... since then I've begun to notice her."

"Only you would refer to fancying someone as 'dangerous,' you prick. Get your priorities straight."

"She's twelve years younger than me!" Remus hissed, dropping his book. "Not to mention the fact that the only money I have is Muggle pounds, and oh, yes of course – that I'm the resident werewolf."

"Maybe you can get her to call you Professor in bed." Sirius snorted, picking the decanter back up and narrowing his eyes at it again. "Stop fussing, Moony. Tonks probably hasn't even noticed your furry secret. If she did, she'd have found some way or the other to trip over it by now. God, you know what you _should_ do, though?"

"If you're telling me to tell her anything - that is out of the question and will forever remain so."

"No, but you know your queer poncy shirts and hair?" Sirius smirked. "Well, I have it from a reliable source that Tonks likes men with shaved heads and lip piercings. Not bloody Pride and Prejudice part two. I don't mind giving you a makeover, if required, my queer old friend."

"I hope Kreacher defecated in your damn decanter." Remus curses, wishing for a second that Sirius would stop being so jovial and return to his moody, moping self before he learned the children would be arriving at the house.

XXX

"Well, the kids are off to Hogwarts, and let me just inform you that I have no bloody idea what we're supposed to be doing now." Tonks quickly morphed back from her old-lady disguise and lengthened her pink hair before stumbling over to Remus, the smoke from around five trains in varying shades surrounding them. "D'you want to go back to Grimmauld?"

"Well, I think we're off for a few days, as Dumbledore would be too busy with the opening of the school and such. I suppose we're just up for lookout duty at night." Remus considers, looking at the tail end of the departing Hogwarts Express and praying inwardly that Harry wouldn't get into too much trouble this year.

"Hm, well... should we go back, then?" Tonks considers, yawning. "It really _is_ sort of boring in there sometimes when you've got nothing to do."

"We could go back." Remus felt a little guilty at saying this next bit, but he feels that entertaining Sirius for two whole months has been quite enough for his delicate sensibilities. "Let me warn you, however, that Sirius will be incredibly depressed and moody for the next couple of days and we are certainly better off away from the house for a few hours at least."

"Hm, true." Tonks shrugged, and grabbed Remus' arm, pulling him through the platform barrier to Kings Cross station. "Well, lets bunk off then. Go somewhere exciting, and have lunch."

"Well -" Remus scratched the back of his head, looking around the station. He tries to ignore the fact that Tonks was still clinging onto his arm to avoid being buffeted around by the crowd. "To be honest, the only exciting wizarding sight in London happens to be the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon Alley. Knockturn, if you want to be a little more adventurous but I'd really rather not."

" _Bo_ ring." Tonks decided. "What about Muggle stuff? London's mostly Muggle anyway, so they've got to have some exciting places at least. Bugger, I haven't got any Muggle money though – maybe we could stop over at Gringotts?"

"No, let it be my treat." Remus is now a hundred percent sure that this has been an act of the divine. Which other incident has actively encouraged the use of Muggle money rather that the Galleons he unfortunately lacked. "The exchange rate is terrible, after all. Twelve pounds twenty pence to a Galleon. You'll get absolutely nothing when you return the exchange, and I already have Muggle pounds on hand."

"Nice, so this can be a full Muggle day out then!" Tonks positively bounced on the balls of her feet as they begun winding their way to the exit of the station, bumping into at least fifteen different people. "How come you've only got pounds on you?"

Ah, the dreaded inquisition.

"I... mainly work Muggle jobs. Bookshop, library, once even a bar that was also a library down in Devon. And since I can't actually spend that on wizarding items such as robes or wands, I usually have quite a bit on me most of the time."

"Cool," Tonks nods, and it is testament that she has not inherited that lack of tact from Sirius that she doesn't press on about the reason he had to work Muggle jobs. "I actually prefer your button-up shirt stuff to Sirius' flamboyant robes to be honest. Not that you're going to tell him that of course. So... where are we off to then?"

"Well, we could take a cab to Madame Tussauds. It's rather fun, really – to see the Muggles' idea of entertainment." Remus suggests, throwing his arm out for a taxi. It does not feel like this life belonged to him – racing away from responsibility and duty with a talkative young girl. He pushes the thought out of his mind – guilt cannot intrude at a time like this when Tonks is leaning out of the car window and pointing out the clock tower, the dead pigeons on the Thames, the Parliament buildings and Muggles in the oddest sort of 'clothing' imaginable. He smiles and leans with her, tells her about the lore of the Princes in the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels, because this was one thing he could do – this was one thing he was honestly good at. As they stepped out after the almost hour-long ride and Remus tipped the Sikh cabbie, they looked up at the glimmering facade of Madame Tussauds, London's famous wax museum.

"Isn't your father Muggle, Nymphadora?" Remus asks, as he pays for the tickets.

" _Nymphadora_? I know nobody with that name. Maybe you should go and ask her about her father, eh?"

"All right, all right. Tonks, isn't your father a Muggle? Or Muggleborn, wasn't it? How come you haven't seen Muggle London?"

"Cause he's Muggle-born, mate." Tonks laughs as they enter the first room of exhibits. "He prefers to go and marvel at all these Wizarding villages, and mum's not actually had much experience with Muggles. Cor – what's that! It's a girl, holy shit! But made of... the fuck? Can I touch it?"

"You're advised not to." Remus grins as Tonks pushes aside the eager Japanese tourists and situates herself right infront of the exhibit. "This is Marilyn Monroe, by the way. A star in old Muggle films – famed for her... appeal."

"Oh, nice – I've heard dad mention films. It's like a photograph that lasts two hours. Sounds sort of fun, doesn't it?" Tonks narrows her eyes at the wax Monroe, as if daring her to react. "Wish this weren't a Muggle place, I could morph into all these statues. Who's this fellow?"

"Er... Hitler." Remus laughs as she leads him to the next room to stare at the mustachioed man. "He was the one the Muggles blamed for the second great war. Pretty much their Voldemort, really. That's Gandhi – he starved himself so Britain would let go of India."

"Oh, cool. Voldemort should do his hair like that, he should." Tonks snorts. "Have you been here before?"

"No, this is my first time." He opens the curtain into the next room and stepped back to let her go in. "Would be odd if I just walk around alone, wouldn't it?"

"How do you know so much about this stuff then? Did you take Muggle Studies at Hogwarts?"

"No, no." Remus scratched the back of his head, looking rather discomfited. "I read a lot. And I went to Muggle university for a few years after... well, when I was twenty five or so."

"Oh, Dad did that too." Tonks nods knowledgeably, glaring at an exhibit of a pirate and baring her teeth at it. "Couldn't find a job since that was the height of Voldemort's first reign, so he went and did a bit of engineering at Birmingham. You know, tinkering with Muggle cars and stuff. That _was_ a fun city, mate, you should go sometimes."

"I went to Exeter," Remus laughs. "That's near Cornwall, a little fishing town, and I didn't do anything as advanced as engineering. I read English and History, which is why I can tell you about all this rubbish."

"Hey, who's that – I like her!" Tonks raced forward to an exhibit of a vivacious looking woman with crimson lips and cheeks. "Vivien Leigh?"

"Er, another Muggle film star. She was in _Gone With The Wind."_ Remus read from the label. "I've actually read that book, it's quite good."

"Wow, you swot. Gone With The Wind... sounds like the story of an anorexic gnome." Tonks considered, poking Remus in the ribs to stop his laughing. "She _is_ pretty though."

"Yes," Remus clears his throat and feels his cheeks numb. He shouldn't say it, yet it was true and it itched at the tip of his tongue and today seemed like it was a gift for his tired soul. "She looks like you."

"Does she?" Tonks swivels around, her eyes wide. "Honest?"

"Yes," He puts a hand on her shoulder, but takes it away in a second. "Yes, she really does."

The day continued in this vein, with Tonks pointing out odd, or vulgar exhibits and Remus explaining to her the story behind them. This man is honestly something else, Tonks thought as he lectured her about the Second World War – none of her boyfriends had ever bothered to show her around, it was always dinner and a fuck. She felt herself drawing closer to him, she knows he's a werewolf and although she didn't know what exactly it did to his personal life – she could feel the scar under his shoulder when she put her hand there. Attraction? She has felt attraction before to bodies, to the Quidditch Captain's smooth abs and bloody Jedediah's tanned legs and even Kingsley was pretty hot if he wore his glittering earring and stops scolding her for one second. But she was drawn to the way Remus explains Hollywood to her, and how he talks about history and books and the English countryside, how he enunciates carefully and laughs every time she says some damn ribald joke. And she tries not to think about that time he said she looked like that Vivien Leigh and placed his hand on her shoulder – she was used to giving oral on the first date and dancing all night in common rooms and this made her want to hold onto his hand.

"I've had a good time. Truly." Tonks tells him, as they exit a small cafe. "It was a really great day."

"Well, I should hope its better than watching Sirius continue his abuse of house elf rights." Remus watches the way the streetlight reflected off her collarbone and tells himself that he deserves this, that he is worthy and he was not causing any harm.

"We can watch that Gone With the Wind gnome story next time," she winks, and hopes he catches the implication.

"Well, it was popular around fifty years ago. But... we can make it work, yes." Remus agrees, walking her down the road.

"Nah, next time it's my treat. I'll show you the deepest, weirdest bits of Diagon Alley." Tonks raises her eyebrows, and wiggles them. "I hear Florean Fortesque does this really cool ice cream with shots in it. Perfect for you, innit?"

"Will you never let me live that down?" He jokes, his hand brushing hers. "See you next meeting then, Tonks."

"Yep." She smiled, and raised a hand before Disapparating. "See you later."

He is not undeserving, he tells himself. He is not unworthy.

XXX

"Sirius," Tonks followed the man into the kitchen. It was November and it was icy cold even inside the house. "Sirius, can I ask you something?"

"If its for my nude photographs, I can tell you that I'm very willing but somebody in this very house would not approve." Sirius raises his eyebrow, winking at her as he deposited his glass in the sink. "What is it, young cousin Nymphadora? Is it any advice in the arts which I claim to be perfect at."

"Yeah, you _claim_." Tonks snorts, looking inside the larder for snacks that contained excessive amounts of cheese and preservatives. "No, I was just wondering... why is Remus acting like... well, like you?"

"You saying he's suddenly become a charming debonair Animagus with hair to rival the gods?" Sirius questioned. "I haven't seen that transformation happening yet."

He peeks through the door and sees Remus glowering at a book by the fire.

"Nope, still terribly old fashioned hair and ugly queer clothes." He nods, satisfied.

"No, you self centred bastard," Tonks swears, shutting the door and ignoring Sirius' yelp as it closed on his hand. "I mean, why is he moody and quiet? He hasn't said a word all day today, and practically nothing yesterday. He looks pissed off enough to rival you and Harry put together!"

"Why are you so concerned about that anyway?" Sirius asks smugly, nursing his pinched hand. "I wonder if someone has a..."

"It's called being a decent person, cousin," she narrows her eyes and continues. "I mean, he's a really great fellow – we went out a few times and he's always so chatty and sweet. So what's with the change?"

"Taken you _outside_?" Sirius gasps. "That traitor! So that's what he was doing when he's supposed to be entertaining me. Now, for real, Tonks – haven't you seen him the last three full moons?"

"Er, no, Auror business." She shrugs. "Wait, is it because of the moon?"

"Yeah, I mean, I've been used to his moods since he was eleven so I don't really notice much but I suppose you would. Especially if he's been...chatty with you, ugh." Sirius finds a bar of chocolate on the counter and idly ponders if Kreacher had poisoned it, or if he should poison it and give it to Kreacher. "James used to called his PMS. Pre-Moon-Syndrome. Not in front of him, obviously, he gets really pissy."

"Should I go cheer him up?"

"Hm, lets see..." Sirius considered mockingly, biting an edge of the chocolate bar off and deciding it was all right if it had been poisoned – death is one step better than having Kreacher spy on him in the loo. "The last time James and I did so, we were seventeen. He proceeded to throw one of his damn two-kilo books at us and yell at us that we were disgraces, 'cunts', and also fags. The last bit may be half true in my case, but it was still rather rude of him so we leave him alone for his PMS to... metamorphose."

"Well, you sort of deserved getting yelled at once in a while," Tonks snorts, taking a fresh box of chocolate from the larder, and surveying it. She places it back and chooses a large packet of Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Beans. "I'm going to go talk to him."

"Well, if he bites your ear off and calls you a filthy little toad, don't say I didn't warn you." Sirius shrugs. He watches Tonks sashay into the living room and he places the chocolate down, stunned. He had thought she'd be frightened by the mention of moods brought on by the moon, hell, even _he_ was rather on edge with Moony at those times yet there she was without a care in the world going to have a chat with him. He deserves a girl like that, Sirius laughs softly through his nose, not someone who cared for him because he was a werewolf or in spite of him being a werewolf – but rather someone who forgets that he was one entirely. Perhaps he'd recognize it one day, Remus would. Sirius stealthily crept forward in the kitchen and pressed his ear to the door, noticing through the corner of his eye how Kreacher was doing the same.

"You shut up and I will too." he deals with the elf.

"Hi, Remus!" Tonks rushes up to his seat by the fire and plonks down in the arm chair opposite him. "Bit chilly, isn't it?"

"Hm." Remus murmured, frowning at his book.

"What are you reading then?"

"A book," the werewolf grunts, bringing it closer to his face as if to shut out the brightness of Tonks' voice and hair.

"Really?" Tonks rolls her eyes and ducks to peer at the cover. "Absalom, Absalom. You really read the oddest stuff, don't you?"

"Go revel in uneducated glory with Sirius." Remus grits his teeth.

"You know who you sound like? Snape." Tonks winks, before exaggeratedly tearing open the packet of every flavour beans. "Want a bean?"

"No."

"We'll make a game out of it, come on."

"No, Tonks."

"Great, thanks Remus." Tonks grins and picks a bean. "I'm going first. Shit...fuck my entire fucking life, I thought it was cherry! Or even bloody strawberry! I'd have been fine with fucking apple at a stretch but this...is hell."

"What is it?" Remus mutters, watching the sputtering Tonks over the top of his book.

"Promise you'll take a bean then."

"No."

"Well, the secret of this little red bean lodges permanently in my esophagus." Tonks shrugs, and reaches for another.

"Fine, damn it." Remus slams down the Faulkner tome and sighs. "I'll take one."

"Cool. It's Bengali-Red-Chilli." she holds out the box and shakes it suggestively. "Your turn, Mad-Hair Moody."

"You're lucky I'm ignoring that," Remus threatens darkly, and picks up a brown bean. "This better be chocolate."

Please let it be shit, Tonks prays.

"Oh, it's.. what the hell? This flavour has absolutely no point." Remus frowns and scratches the back of his head as he swallowed the bean. "Why on earth would there be a _bark_ flavoured bean? I'm writing to Bertie Bott."

"My turn." Tonks brandishes a purple bean. "Behold my cleverness – purple is a safe colour. Nothing ugly is purple. Nothing at all. Purple is the colour of delic – ulp. Fuck. Fuck. _What the hell_? This is -"

"What is it, colour connoisseur?" Remus' lips twitch upward as he watches Tonks cough over the bean.

"Purple...Emperor...Butterfly," Tonks spits. "Hey, what's yours?"

"Ugh..." Remus' face screws up and he looks as if he were about to throw up. "This..."

"Is it piss?" She giggles.

"Don't be so crude! It's _lemon_."

"The fucks so bad about _lemon_ , Remus? It's a fruit!"

"It is a disgusting fruit." Remus watches Tonks choke on a green bean and begins to laugh – he does not know why, Tonks chokes on half the food on the table. But somehow, this was terribly funny, and he has never had so much fun the day before a moon. They exchange flavours until the box was empty and still she continues to tell him the most vulgar stories from her Hogwarts days, and he reciprocates with Sirius' stories and his adventures in wooing the barmaid at Hogsmeade. It was midnight when Tonks rose up from the armchair and Remus watched her go into the kitchen, an odd expression on his face that lasted long after she was gone.

"I can't bloody believe it," Tonks swore in the kitchen. "You actually stood with your ear on the door for two hours."

"Hey, it's my house, my door and my ear." Sirius defended himself, raising his arms. "But uh. You did well. Really."

XXX

"Happy Christmas you bloody arse!" Sirius greeted Remus with a hug as the latter came stumbling out of his room at four in the morning, awakened by Sirius' incessant rapping on everyone's doors. "Good tidings, merry Hippogriffs, don't eat too much puddin' nor drink too much sherry!"

"Oh God, it's four and you're drunk already." Remus rubbed his temples. "Yes, yes, Happy Christmas to you too, now will you not wake the entire household."

"Too late, old chap. Here's your present by the way." Sirius shoved a parcel into Remus' arms.

"Oh, er, thanks. Here's yours. Now go open it in some corner and let me get dressed, won't you?" Remus shut the door and sank back into bed, wondering if he should just go back to sleep and not wake till tomorrow. He fingers the small gilt wrapped parcel on his desk, that with luck and as few Sirius-interruptions as possible, he would be giving Tonks. He turned it around in his fingers, wondering if it was too familiar, or too fast to give her such a thing. He'd gotten it at Harrods in London, he knows wizarding or goblin made furniture would have been better but it was the end of the year and his stock of Galleons was closer to zero than he cared to admit, especially after he paid for half of Harry's present and Sirius'. Perhaps she would think he was being presumptuous, or even an arse – but maybe its a risk he had to take. He looked at Sirius' parcel, and shook it experimentally, hoping it wasn't more alcohol that he'd have to share.

He tore off the paper and out tumbled a brown package which consisted of ten crisp shirts of varying shades and a belt. The card read – 'Always supplementing your fag wardrobe. Love, the only friend you have.' He snorts, and looks at the present hidden under the clothes, the hard edges of a book made him hope Sirius didn't purchase a Muggle book for him, he was surely bound to get one of the pornographic variety. The book was lurid blue and emblazoned on the cover in bright silver letters were the words "Every Wizard's Guide to Getting The Witch of Their Dreams on the Broomstick." Remus considers either a quick method of suicide, or perhaps poisoning Sirius' brandy before sighing at the book and shoving it under the bed.

The broomstick, for God's sake.

There were _children_ in the house.

Christmas lunch was fun - there was no other word for it other than that, as the teenagers chased each other around with crackers that exploded, Sirius spiking the pumpkin juice, Molly and Arthur behaving like newlyweds. Remus himself was reluctantly coerced into bursting a cracker with Sirius, and out popped a Pygmy Puff, which Sirius promptly christened Arsewipe McAlistair and rode on his shoulder the whole day. Perhaps the icing on the cake was Tonks bursting in late with a bunch of presents and chocolate falling from her arms, cursing the traffic and complaining about how her parents made her stay too long for Christmas breakfast. She sunk into a chair and excitably begun popping crackers with each of the kids, claiming the shinier, gaudier presents for herself and making a tinsel hat for Ron. Her cheerfulness almost exhausted Remus, to the point that the party was practically over by the time he girded his loins enough to ask her to come to the next, deserted, living room with him.

"What is it?" She asks as she trips over the threshold. Remus did a perfunctory scan for mistletoe and thanked Merlin there was none in this room at least.

"I, uh... have a present for you. Didn't want to give it to you infront of them – well, Sirius anyway." He coughed, looking at his shoes, as Tonks grinned.

"Well, ladies first, here's yours!" Remus caught the parcel neatly, his eyes almost popping out as he opened the paper and saw a velvet box. If its a ring, I will feel like the most emasculated man alive – Remus promises himself. No, inside the box were a pair of diamond cufflinks, glittering on a black cushion. He clears his throat.

"I – thank you." he admires the workmanship, surely goblin-made. It was tinted with grey and blue at the sides, and he felt his cheeks darkening.

"Let me put it on for you, hold out your hands!" she tells him, and he hopes his wrists aren't sweaty as she fastens the cufflinks on his shirt where they glittered – unerringly, beautifully _hers_.

"This is yours." He hands her the parcel he'd wrapped in pastel blue, and watched her rip open the paper. "It's.. it's Muggle stuff. Not goblin-made, or anything – I just."

"Wow!" Tonks squeals, opening the box. "A silver necklace collar! Bloody hell, Remus – you've actually _got_ a bloody great fashion sense, I love it – I love it a hundred times! It's actually the best thing I've got this year, honest!"

"I -" He clears his throat again. "Should I put it on for you?"

"Obviously?" she moves her hair out of the way, baring the slender lithe flesh of her neck to him, sinking to the hollow of her collarbone and the slight hint of cleavage that showed through her dress. Remus opens the clasp and places it around her neck – how small she feels in his arms! How tender, and fragile – does he deserve such a woman? Does he deserve to be the one that buys her presents so familiar? He feels heat rise in his stomach as he brings his face toward hers in order to see the clasp better, his cheek brushing against hers and he can smell jasmine and vanilla. His lips brush her ear, and the necklace snaps closed with a click. Remus takes a deep breath, and brings his hands downward to the back of her waist and she leans into him, her head appropriately on his shoulder.

"Happy Christmas," she whispers into his shirt.

XXX

"This is...the bloody coldest mission I've been on this year." Tonks swears as she strides along under the Invisibility Cloak next to Remus, her ears the colour of raw beets and her hands almost blue.

"Granted, the year only started last week, Tonks." Remus shivers as they reach the end of the corridor, and takes the cloak off them. "I agree though, this is the coldest I've ever been. This year."

"Oh shut up, won't you?" she pokes him in the rib. " _Why_ Dumbledore couldn't make Hangrid do the watch today, I don't know. I mean he does have the extra body cushioning and everything."

"And you, dear, have almost none." Remus quips dryly, stretching before he slides down the wall next to her.

"I'm taking that as a compliment. Anyway, how's Sirius?"

"Terrible." Remus sighs, rubbing his temples. "He's aggravating to the point of aggressiveness. It's because Harry and the rest left last week of course."

"Hm, well, poor sod." Tonks sighs, and looks at her fingernails. "Still – he really is handsome, isn't he? I'd have expected Azkaban to wear off his looks but nope, he's still got them."

"Ah." Remus stiffens next to her, frowning slightly. "Yes, I suppose he is."

"Yeah, he's got that _look,_ especially when he's plotting things, and knowing Sirius, that's most of the time, don't you agree?"

"I suppose." Remus said shortly, looking at the portraits above them rather than down at her.

"What's gotten into you?" Tonks asks him, elbowing him. How...casual – Remus thinks – like she'd treat a brother, not how she'd treat someone she likes. "It's not even the full moon soon so I've got no idea why you've got to be such a prick, mate. Lighten up."

"There isn't anything wrong." Remus clenches his lips together. "I suppose you've fallen for Sirius, haven't you? Very well, join the ranks of hundreds, why don't you? He probably has a damn list somewhere."

" _Oh_ ," Tonks raises her eyebrows, and bit the inside of her cheek. Remus looks down at her, hoping his anger didn't show in his face. Six months – almost six months he had talked to her, went out with her, touched her and all the time she had liked Sirius? That Sirius' bald vulgar joking and his irritability was what she craved while she had been with him? Heat clouds his vision – Sirius was his oldest friend but at the moment he wanted to strangle the man for merely existing.

"You think I like Sirius, then?" Tonks asks slowly.

"I never said there was anything _wrong_ with it!" He snapped, looking at the portraits again. "I just said that it was the most common bloody thing you could have done."

Ah – Tonks thought. This was what Sirius meant when he said Remus could use the most cutting words.

"You dense arse," she shoots back at him, their voices echoing in the corridor. "You think I'm in love with bloody _Sirius_? Of all the – of all the stupid gits! You _know_ who I love!"

He turns to her at an impossibly fast rate, his eyes wide. In love with him? To love such a thing as he? This life's infinite galaxies and universes have somehow managed to touch and clasp in a manner where they brought him a thrill of joy unlike none he has ever felt before. To fall for him, who turned into a raging expanse of anger and bestial qualities once a month, who snapped near the full moon because every bone in his body itched relentlessly – this fair, delicate little child had fallen for him? He read instead of talked, he worked in bookshops instead of Diagon Alley and he spoke of history and poetry and art but not today's music or the newest singers? His heart feels as if it were about to combust, set itself on fire within his chest for he has liked Tonks, yes – he has played games with her and taken her out merely to at least experience what it would be like to be close to someone like her. And she said she had fallen for him.

"Me?" He is, for once struck wordless not by choice but because his mouth went dry. "Truly, Tonks?"

"Yeah," she shrugs, and is painfully, beautifully reminded by that time he put his hand on her shoulder and convinced her she looked like Vivien Leigh, the same disbelief on her features then were on his now. "Really, it's always been only you."

Remus frowns slightly, and let his hand touch her face, his fingers tracing her temples and disappearing into her hair. He brings his face imperceptibly close to hers, feels the coldness of the January wind on her cheeks and the sleet in the air in her drying hair.

"How delicate you feel," he murmurs in her ear. "How fragile. Yet there is so much you don't know."

"I know." She reminds him. "I know, and still -"

"And still -" He smiles, it is the first true smile she has seen draw itself on his face, not his sardonic smirks or his dry laughter or the pastel grins. Tonks wants to wake up beside this man every day, to make him his favourite French toast and black coffee for breakfast and help him put away his books. Remus kisses her then. It was cold and the corridor was draughty and the Cloak lay at their feet, but his lips are pressed against hers. Surely, he has kissed before – puppy-love girlfriends in Hogwarts, Muggle women in Exeter and Scotland, even a drunk transvestite in Manchester, but to kiss someone who knew and still. And still. Still was the air around them, and Tonks raises her hands to cup the angular planes of his face, brush back the thick hair and draw his face to hers again.

"I suppose," she starts, as he looked at her as if she was a new star discovered in the expanse of the bleak galaxy. "Since I know, it is only fair that you know as well."

Her hair darkens and lengthens till it tumbles to her shoulders, a startling clash of black and brown in soft waves (we match, he thinks – except for his grey), her facial features do not morph but her eyebrows are thicker and darker. Remus feels his breath slow – a true heir of the Black family, and he is also transported to the statue in Tussauds, to old portraits in dark Hogwarts corridors and he kisses her again. Whilst he hid something vicious, all she had hid was her hair colour – so mundane and casual. He wants to bury himself in this casualness, this extreme ordinary romance.

"Pardon me for the interruption," a dry, nasal voice cuts into his reverie and her pleasure. It was a fat, bald wizard from a portrait opposite them, wearing a small fez with gilted tassels.

"Er..." Remus springs back from his kiss, and coughs. "Yes... sir?"

"Professor Dumbledore wishes to convey this message," the wizard glares at Tonks' hair, which she was experimentally morphing back to pink. "He is very glad of your union and wishes you all the happiness in the world but to please put the cloak over yourself and focus on the task at hand."

"Tell him Mad-Eye's cloak smells like dog piss!" Tonks shot back at the wizard (who was once Headmaster of Hogwarts and Head of St. Mungos and rues the day these obscene little witches dared to speak to him). "Ever since Mundungnus borrowed it!"

"Do not jinx the messenger, you little minx!" The wizard's eye twitches, his jowls wobbling. "In my day -"

"In your day you'd have been free to eat all the pumpkin pasties you like, yes, yes!" Tonks argues. "Add another chin and draft another anti-centaur law, yes, that's the 1500s summed up in one sentence innit?"

"And your era, you young hedgehog? You have singlehandedly destroyed the Wizarding Constit-"

"That was a crock of bull, nipplechin!"

"Tonks!" Remus thought it was high time to intervene, especially as this was a public place, they were not allowed to be there and also because he was sure Tonks would continue yelling at the bloody portrait until she dropped dead or it voluntarily peeled off the wall. "Very sorry, Professor... er...convey our apology to Professor Dumbledore and assure him it won't occur again."

"Hm, there's a nice gentleman." The large wizard continued glowering at Tonks. "Incidentally, Mister, are you from the Victorian era and have misjudged a Time Turner. I must commend your choice in clothing, it is very appropriate -"

"That does it, you're coming off the wall -" Remus threatened, when Arthur appeared in the corridor, grinning. The portrait hurried off into its' refuge in Dumbledore's office, and as it would have been inappropriate for Remus and Tonks to try and pry it off the wall, they decided to clear off and let Arthur take his shift. They left the cloak with him and stumbled back out into the icy winter air, this time clasping hands and laughing deliriously enough to make their chests burn.

"Did you just call a head of St. Mungos a nipple-chin?" Remus gasps, his laughter puffing up into clouds before him. "Of all the preposterous, most ignorant -"

"He called me a minx!"

"He also referred to you as a hedgehog," Remus nods knowledgeably as they trudge off down the snow covered street hand in hand. "Incidentally, that is a Shakespearean insult, originating from the 1500s – you have pinpointed his year of birth quite accurately."

"Shut the hell up, Victorian Time Turner."

"If that ever reaches Sirius' ears," he threatens darkly. "I will sue you for defamation and use the money to...replenish my wardrobe."

XXX

"I'm off to visit my father, Sirius." Remus shrugged on his travelling cloak and picked up a brown paper package from the table, tucking it under his arm. "I think Mad-Eye will drop in later with news about his patrols, so just make sure you entertain him."

"A visit?" Sirius narrowed his eyes at them. "A visit? Or is this one of your idiotic plans to sneak out of the house with Tonks and go without me, on a _date_?"

A long suffering, dramatic sigh wedged itself though Sirius' lips, of Laurence Olivier proportions.

"Well, call it what you want," Tonks replied, strutting into the room in a somewhat decent skirt and a blouse that wouldn't look out of place in a Catholic girls' school. "I'm going with Remus. After, of course… I've passed his Draconian test of appropriate skirt length and decent amounts of boob display."

"Remus is a lying pervert who used to come with me to ogle Ravenclaw cleavage," Sirius muttered darkly, irritated that he'd be left along for another few hours while the lovers trotted off on their date. Fair, it was only to Kent and Remus' dad's house where the only interesting things involved books and a cathedral, but still. A walk would have been nice.

"Well Tonks, you _did_ blag an invite, I didn't ask you to come." Remus fingers the material of the shirt in his hand and stifles a laugh. "Secondly, my father's a rather… conservative man when it comes to attire – one sight of your obscene band T-Shirts and the poor man will have a hernia."

"Oh, I was wondering where you got that endearing tendency to have sudden hernias at what you call inappropriate and obscene attire," Tonks snorted, and slipped her arm into Remus'. "Shall we leave, then?"

"Remus?" Sirius calls from his armchair beseechingly. "Didn't your dad like dogs? I remember he likes dogs."

" _No_." Remus widened his eyes sternly and Tonks caught a glimpse of Professor Lupin in class. "My father and I both abhor and despise dogs. Especially disobedient mutts."

"It's good that I am a wonderfully well behaved Alsatian, well groomed, thank you, _tojours pur_ ," Sirius winked as he rose from the armchair, transforming stealthily into the large black dog who ran whining to Tonks' side as Remus looked increasingly like he was going to consider animal abuse. Tonks absently scratched behind his ears and Sirius stretched out his bones. Perhaps he should be a dog all the time.

"I hope Lucius Malfoy spots you," Remus curses as they step into the dreary February sunlight filtering down weakly through the thick cover of clouds. They made their way to Paddington station, Sirius in the front seat of the cab nosing into the Chinese takeaway the driver was trying to discreetly consume, and barking all the way through the station itself. They finally managed to get a compartment to the back of the train which was thankfully inhabited only by a sleeping old couple holding an abnormally large turnip in their wrinkled hands.

"Do _not_ put your nose anywhere near that," Remus warned Sirius as they went to sit by the window, knowing the way of country folk and their affinity toward prize vegetables. He surveys the old couple in order not to look like he notices the way the sun glinted off Tonks' pink hair (which she had refused to change for the occasion, conservative father be damned) or how endearing the way she squinted at the blinding light was. He stares at the wrinkles in the old woman's hands as she loosely gripped her prize turnip and tries not to notice how Tonks' fingers are lithe and beautiful as they tapped out a tune on the windowsill. She turns to him and smiles, it was dazzling and her cheeks were pink with the cold outside and it clashed terribly with her hair but Remus felt his chest seizing up, an uncomfortable fullness rising within him. Is this happiness? He rises up, mimes putting a cigarette to his lips to Tonks and walks out of the compartment and down the corridor. He strides past the occupants of sleeping compartments (many of whom seemed to be carrying vegetables – Remus feels as if he is in a Wodehouse novel) and finally enters the small area where there was a doorway without a door that opened to the outside. He watches the hills roll past and the numerous paddy fields run by as he took calming drags on his cigarette, and the image of Tonks' _young_ face comes to his eyes again, such perfection that he wasn't allowed to hold.

"Woof," came a dry, undoubtedly human voice, and Remus turns to behold Sirius the man, who closed the door behind him. "Now, before you say anything – we're in a train full of elderly Muggles. They'd rather report to the police Tonks with her shit hair before they notice me. Now, tell me what the hell you're here for. And give me a fag, won't you?"

"I am astounded that you do not relish my affinity towards lush landscape." Remus mutters, lighting Sirius' cigarette for him.

"Just like old times, isn't it?" Sirius breathed the smoke out though his nose and winked. "All we're missing is James trying not to cough at our smoke but failing, and bastard Pettigrew going on about lung cancer."

"To be fair to bastard Pettigrew, he was right." Remus huffed, watching a scarecrow sway in the breeze.

"Are you uh, are you having second thoughts about Tonks?" Sirius ventures, his voice serious for once. "I was hoping your… character didn't show through this time, really."

"What do you mean?" Remus' voice was steely and sharp. "My _character?_ "

"Your tendency to… shall we say, be a jealous bastard?" Sirius ground out his cigarette on the wall as Remus took another from the case, his hair buffeted around by the wind. "I don't feel like I have to be diplomatic with you, Remus – I love you far too much to let you shit all over your own happiness. I was hoping you weren't going to be insecure, or feel you're unworthy. Or be jealous of anybody she hangs around with."

"I was _not_ insecure." Remus coughs as the wind blew his own smoke back into his face like some sort of bastard Pettigrew karma. "I was wondering – how Tonks could stand to love something she had once feared to look upon."

"Are you… actually…" Sirius closed his eyes and prayed for strength. "I am trying to have a man to man conversation with you. And you're _fucking quoting Shakespeare_ , you wet ponce!"

"Sod it," Remus laughs, massaging his temples with one hand. "The quote makes sense in this case. She must have heard all those werewolf horror stories, Sirius, her mother was a pureblood witch from one of the oldest families around. As a child, she must have asked her father to check for the werewolf under the bed. And here she is now – here she is, hanging onto my arm –"

"Don't get too worked up." Sirius puts a hand on Remus shoulder. "Anything can happen. It's best you don't prepare and fuck around – _live_ , mate. If she has forgotten those horror stories then what gives you the right to bring them up? She fell in love with Remus the man, not Howly the Werewolf – and you don't have to mope about that because you _are_ a man. Look what happened to James and Lils – they were perfect, Remus. Pureblood and Muggle-born, what a combination to rule the skies, Head Boy and Head Girl, second and third top scorers. And they're dead. You don't have to be perfect to be happy."

"I suppose, yes." Remus throws the last cigarette out into the landscape and prays he hadn't inadvertently caused a forest fire. "I suppose you're right, as hateful as it seems to admit that."

"Now let's get back, shall we? Tonks would think I seduced you – and murdered the turnip couple in rage." The rest of the train ride was uneventful, except for the aforementioned Tonks claiming that the turnip couple were actually deceased and that the turnip was actually to keep their bodies fresh. All three of them took onto this delusion, and thus any uncouth screams that occurred from the cabin as the couple rose when the train stopped at their station were to be excused. The train arrived sluggishly at Kent in another hour, the cathedral looming above them as they trudged through the town, Sirius at their heels.

"Ah, this is such a spot," Remus smiles at Tonks, shaking his hair out of his eyes. "Did you know that the entirety of Geoffrey Chaucer's characters in The Canterbury Tales were on a pilgrimage to this cathedral?"

"Oh…er… that's nice. I love holy people." Tonks shrugs, watching a set of lads take vulgar photos in front of the cathedral. Muggles were weird about pilgrimages, it seemed.

"Yes, you should read The Wife of Bath's tale, Tonks." Remus enthused, ignoring the large bite Sirius had just given his ankle. "I see some of her fire in you. She had five husbands, and –"

"Oh, yeah, that's me then!' Tonks snorted.

"The floure is gon, there is namoore to tel – the bran as best as I kan, now moste I se – ouch, _damn you_ , Sirius!" Remus cursed in pain as he stopped at the door of a small, gabled house with a white door and a vegetable garden. Tonks looked at the carrots, hoping they weren't the size of the turnip on the train.

" _Who_ is mangling Geoffrey Chaucer?" The door opened before any of them got a chance to knock and Tonks got an eyeful of the tall, lean man with a scowl on his face. Sirius was right when he'd said yesterday that the man was an ancient version of Remus – his hair was snowy white and his face was lined but the clothing style was the same. He stared at the three of them in surprise, especially at Sirius who was now sniffing around his carrots and at Tonks' vivid hair.

"Oh." The man rolls his eyes, and his voice was dry and sarcastic. "I should have _known_ it was you, Remus. You always ruin the Canterbury tales with that dreadful approximation of an accent."

"I learnt from the best," Remus shot back, snapping his fingers at Sirius to make him come to heel.

"Well, who is this colourful lady and this wonderfully bred dog? Introduce your guests, you impudent canker blossom!" Tonks stifled a snort at that, and tried to ignore Sirius who was strutting around proudly at being called well-bred.

"This is Nymphadora Tonks – er, I –" Remus faltered.

"I'm his girlfriend." Tonks added helpfully. "And this is Snuffles, he's my dog."

"A _girlfriend?"_ The man's face had barely concealed glee all over it and his argumentative, crabby demeanor did an about-turn. "Come in, come in – yes, the dog too. Lyall Lupin, very pleased to make your acquaintance Miss Tonks. Hello, dog – I know you'll appreciate some steak I've got in the kitchen."

"I see how much you value my presence compared to this lot then," Remus joked, before handing over the parcel he had brought. "This is _Howards' End_ by E.M. Forster. Class warfare and education, I am sure you'll appreciate your two favourite things."

"Hm, yes, the only Forster text I haven't read." Lyall surveyed the book and its' dust jacket before smiling. "Feel free to look around, Miss Tonks – all the good books are mine and the rather dull, disdainful ones belong to your…boyfriend."

It was then that Tonks actually noticed the house. Her eyes widened, her mouth dropping slightly open as she looked at the countless shelves lining every wall – books upon books upon books. There was a shelf going up the staircase and there were shelves behind the sofa and even when there was no more room for shelves, the books were stacked neatly from floor to ceiling in piles straightened by magic. The dining table had books strewn messily on it, and from what she could see of the kitchen there was a book facedown on the counter (a fire hazard, she thinks).

"Bloody hell," she whispers. "You've got a _lot_ of these, don't you?"

"Yes," Lyall smiled delightedly, glad to show off his collection. "My wife, Hope, was Muggle – she despaired at cleaning the place because of all the books. Sweet woman, that – loved a good Bronte but no further."

"That's because you quizzed her about every single book she read, father." Remus murmured drily, as Lyall rolled his eyes and knelt down to pet Sirius and take him into the kitchen. "So, Tonks – you've met my father and you see he's every bit as eccentric as I told you. He's not going to talk to us much, he's going to feed Sirius for about an hour. So, to while away the time – do you want to see my old room?"

"Yeah, obviously. Need to see how little boy Lupin spent his days." Tonks snorted, running her fingers along the books as she went up the stairs with him. "Your dad's not that eccentric, by the way – he seems really sweet."

"Oh." Remus opened the door to the first upstairs room. "Tell him you don't like the character of Victor Frankenstein and you'll take the 'sweet' right back. This was my room."

Tonks feels as if she were transported back in time, and the curious thing was that she doesn't know which era. The bedspread was in Gryffindor colours and his wallpaper was a deep blue with a few photographs of Sirius and James on the wall, as well as one of their graduating class. There were large panels of poetry on every wall, and several pages torn out from literary books, both Wizarding and Muggle. The chest of drawers had several books stacked on it coated with a thin layer of dust and old quills, and there was a large bust of Merlin on the desk too, with gleaming green eyes.

"What's with the Merlin?" Tonks whispered, feeling like a floating buoy in the room. She gravitates closer to Remus.

"Father's idea. I _told_ you he's eccentric." He brings her closer and kisses her full on the mouth in the room of his childhood, feeling the warmth of her lips and the chill of her fingers as she touches his face, moves his hair back from his forehead. Perfection isn't happiness, he reaffirms Sirius' words as he kisses her again, letting his teeth run downward, dragging across her neck as she exhaled a breathy moan. This – he knows, unclasping the buttons of her shirt one by one and shuddering as his fingers touch the heat of bare skin – this is happiness.

"Remus?" Tonks breathes, sliding his shirt down his shoulders and dropping it on the floor.

"Hm?"

"Put that fucking shirt over Merlin please. I feel violated."

Having done so, he walks over to the bed where she was lying, unbuckling his pants. I love you, he thinks, and lowers himself. He resumes kissing her neck, the chaste hollows of her collarbone and the gentle swell of her breasts. She is pristine and ethereal and he hopes this moment will last – that no ephemeral twists would happen now. He kisses down her navel, and slides down her underwear where she invites his kiss – longing and open. He takes off his own pants, freeing his hardness as he lets his teeth run across her sensitivity – the sweat drips off his back although it is February and oh, there is so much love in the world and he wants to clasp it tight to him like he is holding this girl. She rises up from her prone position – he kneels and she kisses his shoulder – laughing.

"I have never been happier," Tonks confides to him, and he smiles up at her, gripping her tighter.

When he enters her, it does not take too long – they are too excited and there is something strange and otherworldly about doing it in a house that wasn't even theirs. His hair is damp and her body is covered in a pearly, translucent sheen as she begs his name – the hollows in her throat as she bucks up enough to make him grip her shoulders as he came within her.

"Dora –" he whispered, and he name feels full in her ears, it sounds like wedding bells and burned toast for breakfast and hurried kisses before work. It feels like chastity and joy and a subtle, unerring lover – like domesticity and home and motherhood. Tonks wants to touch the name to her chest and hold it there like he had held her, her lover with the dark eyes and greying hair – who smoked out of trains and took her to Muggle tourist sites.

"You know what I meant earlier?" she tells him as they lie together under the lazily dusted ceiling where a fan swung sluggishly. "About being the happiest I have ever been?"

"No, what did you mean?"

"You didn't ask me to change." Tonks sighed, smiling. "Everyone I've ever been with. They asked me to do something – maybe bigger boobs, a bigger arse, different hair… something. You didn't care. Although you're an old fashioned fellow, you're fine with my hair being pink. You're okay my eyebrows are so thick or that I grin too often. That's why."

"How can I ask you to change?" Remus turns to her, fingering her lips and the cut of her jawline. "Dora – this world is so cruel. I've hated it. I have hated it to the extent that I live within books and analysis, that I craved Muggle companionship and Muggle education – that literature sustained me in a way the wizarding world had failed. And I hated that sort of life, I hated the fact that I hated life. Yet – you have made me want to live with you, to take you out and to kiss you, to argue with you – "

The word _werewolf_ sticks in his throat, but he doesn't say it.

"To love such a person as you –" he whispers. "What more could I desire?"

XXX

"Who's the fellow in the hall with Dora?" Remus came into the room in which Sirius lounged, looking most disgruntle. "The one with the red hair and freckles."

"It's not the holidays – oh, is it the Weasley twins? I've heard they left school." Sirius got up and looked through the keyhole in a worryingly practiced manner. "Oh, that's Charlie Weasley."

"Which one is that?" Remus asked, narrowing his eyes at the door. "I hope it's the one engaged to the French girl."

"Nope, that's Bill." Sirius grinned. "Charlie's younger than Bill. And _single_."

"Shut it." Remus scowled. "He has a most unwholesome personality. He called me – as I entered the room – a _cheeky bugger_. What does that even mean?"

"Well, I presume it means Tonks has told him all about you two and your uh… exploits." Sirius surmised, still with an uncouth grin on his face. "My, my, must be difficult being the centre of attention. Fame is a fickle friend, Lupin."

"She is literally _sitting_ in his _lap_ ," Remus growled, peeking through the keyhole again. "Who is this bastard?"

"Molly mentioned they were at school together," Sirius bit the insides of his cheek to stop himself laughing at Remus' scandalized expression. "Calm down, he went to Romania, or Egypt or whatever to look at dragons."

"What sort of idiot would go _looking_ for dragons?" Remus muttered, a cloud descending over his face. "How dense and thick would one have to be?"

"Hey, you lot, come and join us for a drink!" Charlie called from the next room, his voice carrying dramatically. Sirius had an expression of slimy glee on his face as he grabbed Remus' arm and frogmarched him to the next room.

"Yes, yes, Remus and I will join the fun. What will you be having?" Sirius sat down at the table and watched Remus sink down next to him, glowering at how Tonks was still animatedly talking to Charlie.

"Some whisky I brought over from Romania," Charlie poured out the glasses for them. "Real good stuff."

"Hmm, flavorful and fanciful, yes." Remus downed the glass in one. "However, nothing compares to good English Firewhisky, matured for a decade."

Sirius snorted.

"Have you blokes ever ridden a magic carpet before, by the way?" Charlie continued. "Tonks here just blagged a ride out of me – told 'er I'd give her one if she ever comes to Egypt – I'm working with dragons there with Bill now, helping his lot guard their cursed treasure."

"Egypt is dusty and smelly and they have snakes." Tonks narrowed her eyes, and tapped Charlie (Remus gasped at the familiarity) on the thigh. "You bring your carpets here."

"Yeah, _Dad's_ the one that banned carpets. A lot of luck I'll have." Charlie poured his second drink.

"Flying carpets are an unnecessary risk." Remus muttered to Sirius in a carrying voice. "Ever heard of the wizard Abdul Azeem, who got blown from Saudi Arabia all the way to South India because he misjudged the wind speed and flew his carpet? Such dangerous, reckless tasks."

"Awh, come on, cheeky bugger –" Charlie laughed, patting Remus on the back. "You haven't seen the modern beauties. Now, I'll take you to the pyramids there, lots of wizarding history. Heard of King Hounhynim, who had a harem of sixty four witches? And a couple of boys in the side too."

"Sounds like my kind of harem," Sirius quipped.

"What a role model." Remus hissed, rolling his eyes. "The only part of history connected with Egypt I hold important has to do with Queen Cleopatra, and her dalliances with Mark Antony. And – Julius Caesar, though he deserved none of her attention."

"Caesar came first." Charlie said easily.

"If you lot set him off quoting Shakespeare," Sirius sighed, thumbing Remus in the cheek. "I will _do a Kreacher_ and go into the airing cupboard to die."

"So… you should really come over to Egypt, Tonks." Charlie shrugs, swilling the last of his drink in the glass. "I'll be there for another couple of months. Should be fun. They're a bit strict about OWL and NEWT stuff if you want to work in Bill's field though – need to get four passes at NEWT or something."

"I got five, mate, I didn't flunk it all like you." Tonks preened, raising her eyebrows. "Add that to six Outstanding OWLS and two passes. When will you?"

"Hey, I got a pass at NEWT for Magical Creature stuff, highest in the grade!" Charlie laughed, raising his hands in surrender. Remus discreetly kicked Sirius under the table, progressively more painful until Sirius finally spoke.

"Oh, er yeah – our NEWTS were incredibly hard. Mm hmm. Yep. Remus here took seven – Outstanding in all of them. Took the cake he did. Wow." Sirius blathered on, whilst Charlie nodded, impressed. Tonks tried not to smile, and surveyed her boyfriend shrewdly. This was going to be a long night.

"So…" Remus muttered, after Charlie had left and Sirius went up to look for Kreacher. "Should I book your ship to Egypt then? Help you pack?"

"Oh sweet, someone's jealous." Tonks winked, crawling underneath the table to pop up on Remus' lap. "Are you jealous of Charlie's tattoo, Remus? Do you want me to give you one?"

"I am jealous of nobody." Remus coughed. "Especially not someone who would disfigure their body."

"Well, I think _Charlie_ should be jealous of you, really."

"Why?" Remus asked bitterly. "Does he have a lifelong ambition to read Shakespeare and turn into a wolf once a month?"

"Knowing him, probably yeah." Tonks laughed, then lowered her face to kiss her lover's neck. "Nah, he should be jealous of you because I've never kissed him like this. Or – like this. And never have I _ever_ kissed him like this."

She kissed him full on the mouth.

"Haven't you?" Remus pulls away and looked searchingly at her. "You haven't ever kissed him so?"

"No. And I hadn't even considered it."

"Then, I owe you an apology." Remus looked shamefaced. "Perhaps I owe him one too. – for acting like…well…"

"Like Sirius," Tonks chortled, kissing him on the mouth to silence him. He bent into the kiss, and thankfully – for he didn't notice a surprised and amused Molly and Arthur standing in the doorway, guided there by an eternally helpful Sirius.

XXX

"Check that doorway – fuck, I think it's that one – " Sirius shouted, his wand at shoulder height.

"No – go forward, I can see figures through the door in front!" Mad-Eye urged, running in first. Remus followed, the exhilaration of battle running shivers and threads in his vein, his heartbeat singing in his chest. He threw a glance to Tonks every now and then, although he knew she could take enough care of herself, he needed to make sure. Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix loomed before them like intimidating gargoyles, along with Dolohov ambushing from behind – Remus elbowed the last with his left arm to force him to duel with him so Sirius and Tonks could deal with the others. He shot the Jelly-Legs jinx at him first – not out of any sympathy but rather that all his next curses were wavery and hurried by the jerking movements of his legs – through the corner of his eyes he could see Mad-Eye and Tonks dueling other people, and Sirius cursing Bellatrix and laughing at her. That bastard, he thinks hurriedly, having a bloody joke while deflecting unforgivable curses. He feels alive as he dueled first Dolohov, then a woman with long, straggly grey hair, his blood sings and his hair whistled back. Youth – was this the crux of what it felt like? Was this the glories of happiness come crashing on him?

"SIRIUS!"

No, it seemed.

He rushed forward as if blind, even while his coat ripped open and a shot of iron-hot silver ran across his shoulder from the witch he had been fighting. He grabbed the lithe form of Harry, he was as strong as a young deer in his virgin grief and pulled him backward to stumble down the steps. His chest seized – it was no curse but oh Merlin, his old friend – where had his oldest friend gone? Harry screamed the place down but it was nothing but wool in his ears – the blood rushing as he imagined the same fate meeting Tonks, laughing her way into death. His lips are numb as he talks to the children, and suddenly, Harry breaks away but there is nothing within him that cared, there was no relief at the sight of Dumbledore and only a blazing blandness in his throat.

I have had enough, Remus thinks dully, of this world.

He rushed forward to the shocking pink of hair on the floor, his heart beating in his throat and he almost snatches her away from Mad-Eye and his fingers are shaking as he jabs her in the throat, looking for the pulse that did not beat. Please – he thinks – please let her live, and his fingers are cold and shaking as he fondles the paleness of her neck. He has only just learned to love – he cannot go back to hating again, he cannot survive this terrible world without this elf, this mustard-seed he had sorely missed and did not know.

"My love –" Remus gasps through numb, tingling lips. "Dora – "

"There's a pulse, boy." Mad Eye says calmly, his eye socket closed. "Calm down. She's alive. Look, I can hear Dumbledore coming now, you stay still and look at her breathing, Lupin. She's alive."

Alive, he thinks – but he does not feel it. The sudden life that had flared in him the past month was flickering and fading – yet still irrevocably present with every beat of Dora's heart.

"Remus – you take Auror Tonks to the hospital," Dumbledore commands from above, and Remus thinks vaguely that this was how it felt to be called home by one's mother. "Stay and make sure she wakes, after which you come to me. There are several things we have to discuss."

He picks up her lightness, so heartbreakingly different from all the other times he had picked her up in jest or in lust and carried her silently upstairs. What a bride, he thinks, and laughs as he enters the icy Floo and the warmth and sterility of the hospital. He waits then, for what seemed like hours and hours, by her bedside. Sirius. Who had hidden every morsel of grief under jokes and innuendo, who had covered up his hurt with cigarette smoke and the bark of his laugh. Moody, unpredictable Sirius who would have sat with him now and told him to rest – who had told him to live because anything could happen. Something to the left of his lungs seems to spontaneously combust, burn slowly and unerringly and left behind a gaping hole. Sirius – his friend from the Hogwarts Express, who had kicked James in the nuts and won three games of Exploding Snap, who never talked about home if he could help it. What is there for a thing as I to live, if good men like Sirius are gone – he thinks brokenly.

"Remus – how long have I been out?" Tonks' eyes are open, brilliantine shiny and black and her hair is fanned across the pillow.

"Dora –" he forgets that she is on a hospital bed and that her ribs are broken and instead he lurches on to her, holds her tighter than he had ever held anything. A tether to life itself, a tether to love and feeling and being alive – a tether to a heartbeat and an assurance that she was not gone. "To see you alive is all I have –. To see your eyes open takes away a million yearnings."

"Of course I'm bloody alive!" she sounded muffled and strangely annoyed at the comment.

"To think on thee, dear friend – all losses are restored and sorrows end." He almost laughs into her hair as she shook with giggles.

"Can you stop quoting your bloody Shakespeare and tell me what happened?"

"Sirius – is dead." The words feel strange and alien from his mouth. He himself feels detached from the scene as the shaking of his lover become choking sobs, as she cried into his chest he stares blankly at an ant on the wall. No words. There are _no_ words. He is glad that she is so hot and bright and solid, that her crying can compensate for his lack of emotion and that he wants to hold her as she fell asleep and lie with her on the stiff hospital bed, hands clasped and tethered and tied together. But he lets go of her, kisses the hot forehead and kisses away the tears. He has to leave.

"Dora, I'll be back as soon as I can," he whispers into her hair as her parents walk in. He does not feel up to an introduction right now so he slips out of the room with his head bowed and Apparated outside Hogwarts. Dumbledore's office has a look of delicate rebuilding, as if he could sense cracks in the Sneakoscopes and whirring objects that watched him sit down at the desk silently. Phineas Nigellus sat in his portrait as if in shock – Remus doesn't know if it was grief over the rebellious bastard grandson he had finally gotten to know, or whether he was astounded that the Black line would die out.

"Remus, I hope you are all right." Dumbledore surveys him over the tips of his fingers. He looks old in the dull light. Old and weary and yearning, as if he had left behind something in the past that he wanted most terribly to retrieve.

"Yes, Professor." He clears his throat and hopes Dumbledore will not bring up physical pain versus metaphysical pain, he is in no mood for philosophy (Sirius had hated philosophy, had called it a bunch of tosh). "You wanted to discuss something with me?"

"Yes. As you are aware, Remus – the war has truly, openly begun." Dumbledore sighs, probing under his spectacles with his fingers. "I will groom Harry to take over his role as the Chosen one – but until the boy is mature enough, our world is in chaos."

"Just like old times, eh?" Remus finds himself echoing Sirius again. The hole is too great and for a minute he wants nothing more than to shatter.

"Voldemort will try to recruit again – we cannot stop those with pre-existing prejudices but we _can_ stop the magical species. Centaurs will not join either side. The giants have gone to Voldemort. Unicorns will never be the steed of evil. Goblins will join whoever that is winning, and only our House Elves will fight for Hogwarts – the others for their masters. What does that leave?"

"The werewolves," Remus smiles. "Werewolves. You want me to go on another infiltration mission like the last time. But Professor – last time this venture failed horribly."

"Because you started from the bottom up." Dumbledore decides. "This time, you will attempt to befriend Fenrir Greyback himself. It _will_ be far more difficult. He is shrewd enough to find your weaknesses, crude enough to exploit them – but I wish for you to strike up a friendship with him and none of the others in the pack. Then, you will have a position of power."

"Exploit my weaknesses." His lips were freezing although it was June and the window filtered in sunlight.

"I understand your…reluctance. But it is important to note, Remus, that having the werewolves on our side would be a great asset." Dumbledore stands and begins to pace. "The vampires are stubborn and disloyal, they prefer high society and aristocracy and thus mingle with Muggles rather than care for our wizarding warfare. Werewolves, however – have an innate pack mentality. It would be a great boon to have them on our side."

His pack.

"I understand, Professor." Remus nods, his throat seizing. "I'll prepare, and leave as so – soon as I can."

"Remus." Dumbledore turns from the window, and surveys him seriously. "Do not think you have to go immediately. Not even this year. Do not lose your connection to the human world because I've asked you to spy on the werewolves."

"I understand, Professor." He thinks of Tonks. He thinks of her, and for her, and about her as he blindly goes through Hogwarts into the grounds. He reflects on the shine of her hair and the glisten of her smile as he Apparates to his cottage in Yorkshire – slightly worse for wear as he had stayed mainly in Grimmauld and Tonks' apartment for the past year. He fingers his library of books and wonders if he should have pushed her away from the beginning – that she shouldn't have shown her Tussauds and he shouldn't have kissed her or made love to her all those times. That he was such a creature that had clearance to go make friends with one of the most vile werewolves around, that she was his weakness, that he though of her daily – all this pointed to his stupidity. That trait of foolhardiness that followed him around since birth shone bright – and he throws _Othello_ to the floor. "To love what she had once feared to look upon." He drops _The Wyf of Bath_ on the floor and kicks it aside in sudden rage. "I trowe I loved him best for in his love he was daungerous to me." He flings Jane Eyre across the room and feels like the blind Rochester, groping and groping but never touching.

XXX

"Man, these Dursleys are a really fat lot aren't they?" Tonks snorted as they walked down Kings Cross Station. "Hey, remember the last time we were here? You and I –"

"Yes." He cuts her off, and takes her hands in his. He wants to die at this moment so the universe does not have a chance to pull him away from his lover. But he must – or she will be the one that ends up on the Prophet, her body sliced open, mauled, deformed. Bile rises thick in his throat and he cannot believe he has wasted this year loving someone who he must eventually let go. That he had failed to appreciate the prescience of Sirius. "Shall we go to my house?"

"The one in Yorkshire?" She asks. "Sure, as long as you make me some of that roast you promised."

"Yes." He affirms lamely, and turns with her. For the first time, he revels in the action of Apparating, just a few more seconds clasped to her.

"Your books…" she murmurs, tracing the broken spines of the tomes he had thrown to the floor, but says no more.

"Dora – I must confide in you." Remus swallows. He wants to sit down, his knees were in danger of buckling but he forces himself to go closer to her, take in the vividness of her hair and the gloss of her skin. He touches it. One last time – he tells himself.

"Is this about Sirius?" she asks carefully. "Do you want to talk about him?"

"No –" he begins, brushing his hair back from his face. "Dumbledore has asked – no, assigned me to go recruit Greyback to our side. He is vile and violent, but with control he could be a good asset to our side. I am told to… make friends with him. Which means I'll be away for major parts of this year."

"You can always come home to me, can't you?" A hungry fear creeps into her eyes. "What's wrong, Remus?"

"I –" He cannot say that he is afraid Greyback would kill her. She is too practiced with his moods and nonsense, she will tell him exactly what he wants to her. "I cannot love you any longer."

"Why. The. Fuck. Not?" Tonks pushes away from him, her hair flashing red and her eyes turning a dazzling maroon. "What sort of bloody bastard – what sort of lover are you if you can walk in and tell me that you can no longer love me? What is it? What do you fucking want?"

"I want peace of mind." He exhales. "I am so much more older than you –"

"Twelve years. We're both bloody adults, you even _laugh_ when I call you old!"

"The only money I have is Muggle, Dora –"

" _Don't you dare call me that!_ " she warns him, her hands gesturing toward him menacingly. "We've made use of your Muggle money, you've taken me to…so damn many places, we've –"

"I'm a _werewolf_!" Remus finally exploded, smashing his hand into the bookshelf beside him. His hand began to ache as the wood splintered and books fell – and fright entered the eyes of his lover. He wishes he were dead, but finds it within him to continue.

"My kind do not mix with yours. This last year… I was… I was so happy, Dora. I was so happy to be with you, to show you these Muggle literature, these funny locations and those train rides – that I forgot what I was. I rejoiced in your ignorance of my condition, I reveled in the fact that you did not even care nor notice." He exhales, shuddering. "I can do so many things to you."

He moves closer to her pale face. Her hair is darkening and lengthening by the minute, falling in sable waves down her shoulders as her eyes filled. He held her in his arms, lithe, petite – _breakable_.

"I can destroy you. Ruin your life so that you would pray every day that you hadn't met me."

"You can fucking kill me, Remus-" she chokes out. "I'll never regret meeting you."

"Do _not_ make this harder for us." He begs her, but still keeps hold of her hand. "You must leave me. You must leave me now."

"Like fuck I will." She shoots back, but the defiance is not shining in her face – it is marred by tears trailing down her cheeks and her hair contrasting terribly with her alabaster skin. Scarlett O' Hara – he thinks suddenly with a seize in his throat (he still remembers the museum, and how she had looked so much like the star) – chasing after what she could never have. Chasing after what she believed held happiness but only held grief.

"I am so sorry that I have met you," he explains. "I will regret this, but I will regret more every day we have spent together."

She backs away from him, but Remus still had her hands in his. He lets it go as if in a daze, and watches Tonks stumble out into the sudden rain on the moors – watches her walk into the distance before Apparating. It hits him all of a sudden then – the whole wight of the year crashes into him with such force that he is brought to his knees, sitting amongst the books he had knocked down earlier. It seizes Remus' chest, so constricted like iron bands around his ribs and a hollow pain in his throat. Sirius. He begins to cry then, finally, his fingers on his temples and his heart breaking. The grief emasculates him and threatens him as he rested his forehead on the grain of the bookshelf, shuddering with sobs that had been within for so long it felt like forever. He would do anything for a second chance.

This too then, he has destroyed.

XXX

 **PREVIEWS of part 2 – "everything is grey, his hair, his smoke, his dreams."**

"The world is kind to those who are good, Remus." Arthur's voice was steady and pacing. "There will be justice for all of us."

"What if there is no justice?" He laughs, ice making a cloud before his face. "What, then? Do I let someone as vile as Greyback run? Do I let someone so innocent as Dora lose herself?"

He rises, and looks at the snow crusting on trees beyond.

"There is no justice for me in this life." He whispers to the barren landscape. "I have prayed, and I have read but all that has… salvaged me… is nothing."

"Our world is cruel as it is magical." Arthur places a hand on his shoulder. "There will be something ahead for you both. You have to wait."

 **A/N-** **Yes, a long read but I think the upcoming chapters are longer. I understand I've dallied around with JK's official Pottermore retelling, however - I wanted to depict more of the love story rather than just Remus angsting all the time. Characterization-wise, I've tried to maintained their characters yet added a side to all three of the current main characters which wouldn't come about around the children.  
Remus' affinity toward books and his tendency to quote literature, as well as the fact that he immersed himself in Muggle education and literature was my own headcanon, and I hope nobody had any trouble with it. I mainly used books that I love - and the literature nerds among us would be able to see that a lot of the endearments or insults used by Remus and his father are Shakespearean. I also tried (especially in the upcoming chapters) to make their flaws shine through clearly, Remus and his jealousy and insecurity and Tonks and her brashness rather than painting one character as flawed and the other a saint.  
The title of this chapter is from Shakespeare's Othello, the second chapter's is from Colors by Halsey - and the title of chapter 3 will be from Jane Eyre. The title of the full work is from Shakespeare's Loves Labours Lost from the line - "As love is full of unbefitting strains, all wanton as a child, skipping and vain"  
Again, i sincerely hope all sort of comments and feedback are left, and each and every one will be replied to. I've spent quite a bit of time on this and would adore some recognition.**


	2. A Smoke Raised With The Fume of Sighs

**IT'S BEEN A YEAR I'M SO SORRY HOLY SHIT.**

 **Also, I changed the title of this chapter, because I honestly wanted to keep it to Shakespearean dialogue with the titles because I'm honestly a fucking nerd, as is Remus. Lots of changes for me in the past year, including moving to the UK for uni, so I hope I've got a bit more geographically accurate with the locations! Have a good read, and don't forget to leave your thoughts! xx**

 **Summary:** _ **Spanning Half-Blood-Prince, Remus and Tonks encounter murder, Greyback, geographical misplacement (read: getting hopelessly lost) in India, heartbreak, and an attack by Madame Puddifoot's cupids.**_

 **...**

This too then, he has destroyed.

He had not expected any better, he tells himself as he rearranges the books on his shelf and the fragments of his control back within him. Dora was someone he could never hold on to – a wild thing, a frightening thing in her blazing joyfulness and her sudden, flashing hair. He was nothing. Perhaps he may have seemed enticing, attractive; his crisply pressed Oxford shirts, his rolled cigarettes, and his beetling brows and laughter. But beyond that there was absolutely nothing to him – like a reptile (strangely, for he was tied within to a monster _mammal_ ), he absorbed heat and laughter from others, like Dora, like Sirius, like James. But they were all gone and he is left with bare walls and ruined books and the prospect of friendship with Fenrir Greyback. He puts his wand in an inside pocket, and spins on the spot to a seedy street in Birmingham. He spots the newsagents next to a dingy nightclub and enters, trying not to grimace at the smell of stale blood.

"Can I help?" a girl answers the press of the bell and raises her bright blue eyebrows at the state of his dress. "You get lost from the uni, mate? Don't think the professors usually go to the clubs on this side of town."

"Uh, could I have a pack of Rizlas and a small pack of Amber Leaf," Remus delays, scratching the back of his hair and taking the time the girl's back is turned to rip off a couple of buttons and tousle his shirt, before consulting the paper Dumbledore had given him. "And I'm also here to see _die_ _Wölfe."_

He isn't too sure how just saying 'the wolves' in German provided a good cover in any way, but miraculously the girl snorted at his pronunciation and thumbed to the back of the store where a door melted into the wall. Remus grabbed his coat and made towards the wall, knowing for certain that the first step he takes within would be the final step away from Dora, and rendezvouses in Madame Tussauds, and joy.

"Oi geezer," the girl rolls her eyes dramatically, waving his packet of Rizlas. "I don't give a shit as to what you lot have going on back there but you better pay for the smokes."

Remus goes through the door (which melted conveniently and rather alarmingly back into the wall) , and faced a gritty bar where about thirty different men and women sat around in ragged clothes, drinking from pitchers of beer. The air hung thick with cigarette smoke, hence his surprise at children running around in the far corner playing an improvised game of tag (where the loser got bitten hard enough to draw blood) and a heavily pregnant woman taking drags of what Remus was _sure_ wasn't tobacco. Everything within him urged him to go play with the children, or talk to the less offensive looking members of the group but he squared his shoulders and remembered Dumbledore's orders – start from the top, _befriend_ Greyback. Well, he wouldn't have to wait too long, he shrugged, considering Greyback was making for him at the very moment.

"Lupin?" The man, although of a similar height to Remus, was about twice as broad and his face made bigger due to the almost impressive sideburns that ran all the way down his face. "Remus Lupin? One of my own? Thought you ran your fanny back to the wizards in the eighties, son. What's your mug doing here, or are you looking to get kicked out on your arse?"

"I didn't…" Remus resisted the urge to either roll his eyes or punch Greyback in the nuts. "…run my _fanny_ back, Greyback. I just absconded. For a short period."

"Ah, spoken like the Queen's bastard, don't need to do any identity checks on _this_ one." Greyback grinned, the points of his sharpened canines glinting in the yellow pool of light, and clapped Remus on the shoulder. "You aren't out of the woods, mate. Tell me why the fuck you're here before I literally rip you limb to limb. Last I saw of you was barking back up Dumbledore's tree. In the fuckin' eighties. If that's a short period, you cunt, then the hundred years war was a summer vacation."

Hundred Years' War? Not many wizards were aware of Muggle history.

"My friends had just died!" Remus protested, his palms up. "I had nothing, I _was_ nothing – you supported Voldemort, and he was the one who had killed –"

"I support _nobody_ ," Greyback hissed at him, slamming a palm down on the counter. "Nobody. Not Voldemort, not your old geezer, not Merlin, not anyone. I don't give a shit about them and their pissing contest."

"I can relate to that." Remus said, despising himself for there being a strain of truth to the admission.

"You ran off like a pussy, because you thought I supported the fucker who killed your friends? And here I was, thinking you were giving intel to Dumbledore. Now that, son. That would have gotten you in three body bags deposited in Cornwall, Surrey, and Sheffield."

"The sheer geographical effort invested in that." Remus forces a smile. "Would honestly have been a good way to go, Greyback."

"So why are you here now?" the bigger man probed further, but motioned Remus to a grey stool at the bar and loosened his shirt to scratch his chest. "Here, drink this – it's on the house. As is everything, you know, threatened the Muggle owner with a wee bit of murder and torture. Why are you here, Lupin – got tired of licking around Dumbledore's tits?"

"Well," Remus, making a mental note to tell Dor- the Order about that mental image at the next meeting, decided some honesty might provide a faster track to what Dumbledore wanted him to have with Greyback. "I, again, am left with nothing. My friend is dead, I have no job, and no girl."

"No girl?" Greyback raises his eyebrows. "Someone like you – sometimes I wonder why the fuck you ran to us, both times. Someone like you would only come to us when you've got absolutely nothing, isn't it? Well, welcome to this den of sinners and murderers, and much good may it do you."

x

"I don't care." Tonks declares dramatically to Molly, slapping her mug of tea down on the table. "Remus is just every other bloke. Sure we shagged, sure he's a good catch but frankly I could _not_ care less as to what –"

"Then why are you here, love?" Molly smiles knowingly, and dries the splashes of tea from her table. "If this doesn't bother you at all, why are you at here at three in the morning for the third night in a row with your hair a colour you'd never willingly make it and your fingers around a drink I remember you calling Satan's diluted urine?"

"Well he _is_ a wanker, but I thought we had something." Tonks admitted, shrugging. "I've never had that with any man. Not even Charlie, I'm sorry Molly, not with any guy I've been with."

"How so?" Molly asks. What was there in dry, quiet Remus that was deficient in her sons?

"When he says my name, or even after we shag, or when he and I bloody look at each other across the table, I feel like I want to wake up beside him every day. And make him coffee. And watch him make us breakfast, take our kid to school. Stand on the damn platform waving him or her off to Hogwarts."

Tonks sighed before laughing wearily, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes.

"He makes me feel like I want to be _you_ , Molly."

"And you wanted it, didn't you, love?" Molly places her own hand, scarred with burns of decades of cooking, onto Tonks' pale calloused fingers. "You wanted to be me, but what makes you think he wouldn't come back after whatever his mission is? He's never known a home, Remus, I know he wandered all around the country but he never stayed anywhere more than a few years. If you're his home, he would return to you. Everyone wants to be called home."

"Because I'm not home." Tonks looks Molly straight in the eye, the pretence of not caring for Remus draining away. "I'm no home, and there's no home in war like this. Remus tries to anchor himself, I know, he's the quintessential Englishman, isn't he? Him and his poetry, him and his bloody Muggle education. But try as he might, he's a gypsy, running off in the middle of the night to whatever he thinks at the time he belongs to."

"It's up to you to find hi-" Molly starts valiantly, before a ticking noise emerged from the clock and Fred and George's faces landed on 'Home.'

"Hello, birther of the best," Fred barged into the room, identity check be damned, and George pushing his way behind him. "Let it be known that Fred Weasley has found himself a _girlfriend."_

"He hasn't really." George muttered from behind him, moodily straightening his collar. "He just poured a bit of love potion into her coffee and bang, she can actually tell us apart. Hullo, Tonks, what's with the pigtails? Going back to school? Or are you going all the way with the I'm-fucking-a-Professor lark and just walking around in roleplay?"

"Watch the mouth, you little shit," Tonks narrowed her eyes and twisted the boy's ear. "I'm still capable of hanging you both by the ears from the ceiling like I did back at Hogwarts. Never heard a couple of first years scream that loud, should've got a picture for this clock you've got here. Anyway, thanks for the talk, Molly, I'm heading up to Hogsmeade for patrol. Does anyone need anything?"

"Could you pick up a Zonkos order for me? I swear it doesn't smell or make any noise." Fred gave her a slip of paper and pinched her cheeks. "That's it, I knew I could count on little Tonks."

Revenge must be sweet, Tonks supposed, as she made her way into the biting cold and Apparated into Hogsmeade. It was almost yesterday when she'd chased the first year Weasley twins into Greenhouse Three and convinced them to pet a Venomous Tentacula. And here they were about twice her height and with balls of steel big enough to pinch her cheeks. She ducked into Zonkos, and came out with a package wriggling suspiciously under her arm and a strong scent of processed rubber about it. How she would face Dawlish on patrol with this and a straight face she couldn't imagine – but it was then she saw him, leaning against the entrance to the Hog's Head and puffing on a fag. She considered ignoring Remus, but his head had already turned to her and though his expression didn't change, two spots of colour had appeared high on his cheek like blusher. Damn, thought Tonks – idiot keeps reminding me why I fell in love with him.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in." Tonks stopped beside him under the pretence of adjusting the (seriously squirming) package under her arm, and raised her brows at Remus. "Thought you were supposed to be living in a drainage ditch with Wolfy McWolf and all the little cubs you've no doubt fathered by now."

"Incredibly droll. Downright hilarious." Remus drawled, before pointing at Tonks' package. "What's that? Have you begun dealing in rare magical creatures and this your first shipment of eggs?"

"Actually no," Tonks frowned, poking at the parcel gingerly. "I was just collecting an order from someone, but the problem being that I have no bloody clue what's in this. Want to go in somewhere warm and have a look?"

"Uh," Remus faltered, but Tonks' eyes were wide and hopeful and she looked far too young, and the terrible part of him he had tried for weeks to suppress rose up again like bile. "Yes, we should probably inspect it – dangerous times. Greyback's in this bar though, let's go up somewhere slightly less conspicuous."

"I didn't remember Madame Puddifoot's as being 'less conspicuous', Tonks." Remus rolled his eyes as she stalked into the teashop and deposited the parcel onto a low table. A couple of cherubs flew gloomily over their head, looking more like gnats than messengers of love. "All this glitter, confetti, and alarming presence of flying foetuses is what I'd generally refer to as incredibly obvious."

"It's not a flying foetus, you wanker, it's a cherub. If you weren't so averse to commitment, you'd probably appreciate their presence."

"Ah," Remus breathed in, looking uncomfortable. "You have dragged the elephant in the room in by the trunk, haven't you? You draw me, you hard hearted adamant."

"Will you get constipation if you don't quote bloody Shakespeare at least once a day? Anyway, just help me have a look at this crap, then we can both get back to our lives." Tonks muttered, already regretting her outburst. She shoved the parcel across to Remus and watched him poke at it with her wand. He took a deep breath and shoved his hand through the wrapping paper and emerged with an elongated object, shaped oddly like a penis, writhing around at the top.

"What in the name of all that is good on this disgusting planet is _this_!?" Remus looked horrified, but not as horrified as the cherubs now angrily congregating over their table. Tonks began to snort as it soon became evident that the object was stuck to Remus' hand, and the sight of him waving it around trying to shake it off as his eyes widened in terror was too much to bear.

"Fuck right off," Remus angrily told a cherub that flitted too close wagging it's fingers, and used his hand to flick it over the head. Unfortunately, that hand had a rubber penis attached to it, which was enough to send Tonks into fits. She reminded herself to kiss Fred and George and forgive them for all their numerous past transgressions. "Interfering little tosser."

"Imagine I take a month to try and integrate into the pack," Remus lamented, gesturing with the sex toy stuck to his hand. "To make friends with Greyback, to pretend I'm one of them – and I go back to them _with a pair of literal bollocks stuck to my hand_. Fantastic. This is the height of my wizarding career."

"Morning, Professor Lupin." Neville had walked into the shop with Luna, and Remus considered either poisoning himself with the confetti or stabbing himself to death with the fake penis. Tonks grabbed onto his free hand, grinning, whilst Neville looked at him expectantly. He weakly raised his other arm in greeting, and resignedly watched the boy's eyes widen in horror as he comprehended the sight and quickly ushered Luna out of the store.

"This is all your fault." Remus frowned at Tonks, who was wiping tears from her eyes. "I was having a perfectly relaxing morning, I was having a cigarette, the weather wasn't utterly terrible. Then you come along, and I have gotten slutshamed by a cherub, mentally scarred one of my favourite students, and I have a …monstrosity attached to my hand."

As if on cue, the penis finally made its grand departure and flopped to the floor.

"And now that too has left me." Remus looked at it dejectedly.

"I should probably have mentioned it was an order for Fred and George." Tonks gasped. "Although this is a clever joke, to give them credit."

" _How_ is a fake penis a clever joke?" Remus placed his hand over the one Dora was still carelessly gripping, and leaned towards her. "No, Tonks, educate me. Tell me exactly how a fake penis is funny. Is this a brand of humour I have not yet learnt? Is there some alarmingly niche set of penis jokes that I have not come into contact with so far?"

"Can you not say the word penis _that_ much, Remus, because it is the worst turnoff in the world. That, and you screaming at a cock being attached to your hand for _five_ bloody minutes." Tonks got out, aware that Remus was looking straight at her. Without a word, he leaned over the table he was already too tall for and placed a hand on her cheek. He kissed her beside her lips, then on them, opening her lips with his tongue as she kissed him back. Remus pulls away to look in her pale eyes filling slowly with tears, and kisses her again, his hand tracing the back of her neck.

"I forgot how utterly lovable you were." He murmured, pulling back but letting his hand rest on her face. "How you could laugh. How we laughed together."

"And that's your fault, isn't it?" Tonks shot back, swiping his hand from her cheek. "That we can't laugh together any longer. That's on you."

"It is." Remus agrees, rubbing his temples. "As is kissing you now. As is being myself to be so in love with you that there is not a moment I don't think of you. Oh, like Scarlett o Hara, your youth and your childishness and your laughter. It's always on my mind. It's dangerous, and it is a war where people can read the enemy's mind and the fact that you're on mine constantly –"

He looks up at her during his tirade and his face is conflicted, his eyes dark.

"I'm sorry, Tonks. For all of it."

x

"That was your girl, weren't it?" It was a week later, and Greyback sat on the Birmingham bar counter next to Remus, who was looking down into the ashtray dangling from his fingers. Remus' head snapped up as if by elastic and he turned to Greyback, trying not to let fear show in his eyes.

"My girl?" His hand froze on the ashtray and his heart froze in his throat.

"The one that dropped a bunch of fake cocks in Hogsmeade, son. Saw you looking at her." Greyback laughed bitterly. "I know that look. I've looked like that myself."

"Ah," Remus tried to swallow past the anxiety, keeping the ashtray on the counter and wiping his hands on his trousers. "She's just –"

"Your girl." Greyback looked at him seriously. "I had a girl too. Karina, from Liverpool. She was foreign, exotic, from the far East – and I find out later, Muggle. She knew I was sick, you know. Not that I was a fuckin' werewolf, that's bloody murder, but that I was sick and that I could pass it to her. Did she care? She didn't give a damn. Used daddy's money to take me to her home. Took me to the China Wall, showed me around her country."

Remus could relate. Those trips around Muggle London, the museums, the talk of films. Dora, so exotic, almost foreign.

"I felt I was ordinary." Greyback's face twisted into a smile that looked as if it was dug into his face with the point of a knife. "Not a wizard, not a werewolf, not anything. That when all these Chinese people crowded around me to take photographs, it was because I was a tourist, not because I was a depraved motherfucker."

"Then why didn't you continue?" Remus asks honestly, his fingers splayed out across the table, the gaps between them slender but not too narrow for Dora's fingers to intertwine through. "Why are we here in this dingy bar deciding how to turn more people into us, rather than travelling around the far east?"

"That's why I don't believe in the blood purity bullshit, Lupin," Greyback ignored his question, and slammed his fist on the table, causing a glass to shatter. "Voldemort and his bloody pure wizard blood bullshit, Dumbledore and his _evil is a thing to be contained_ crap, the Muggles and their fucking wars over skin colour and religion and whatever they come up with now. It's nothing to me, my blood is not and never will be pure for all of them at once. Nor will yours, or anyone's fucking blood be perfect enough."

"Then _why?_ Why do you do the same thing Voldemort does?" Remus pushes him. "Why do we kill people who don't agree?"

"Mate, you think I do this shit because Voldemort tells me?" Fenrir Greyback laughed, and patted Remus on the shoulder condescendingly. "You think I give a fuck what that bald motherfucker cracks up to be? No. The only blood I am loyal to is our own. Wolf blood. My pack. Because we all know, every one of us in this pack, that we're too wrong for this. Even the children here know something that all the Death Eaters, wizards, and Muggles haven't figured out yet. That's why. Because I don't consider this a curse, you shit, I consider it a _blessing_."

In the low light, Greyback looked accurately deranged.

x

"Arthur, you honestly shouldn't have invited me." Remus shrugged. It was Christmas morning and Molly was wailing inconsolably at the (rather humorous) departure of Percy whilst her children ran around her comforting her like baby chicks to a mother hen. "I'm not exactly the person you want around Christmas, not to mention the pack are doing their own rather odd version of the holidays. It does involve a lot of raw meat, hence me not complaining."

"We wanted you here, honestly." Arthur grinned before confiding to Remus. "You should see Molly's face at her future daughter in law, I thought I'd do you that favour."

"To be fair to Molly," Remus raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "For someone that blindingly attractive, Fleur has close to zero tact. Oh – I've been meaning to ask, but wanted to wait till after lunch. Was… did Tonks' Patronus change? Harry mentioned it at the dining table, and I was just slightly curious."

"Slightly curious, yeah. The number of times Molly walked into you two - " Arthur snorted at Remus' attempts to look nonchalant before turning serious. "Yes, Remus. It changed into something I'm quite sure is a wolf. So, all my respect to you as a friend and everything, but congratulations. That really takes effort – to make someone upset enough to change their Patronus."

"What was I to _do,_ Arthur?" Remus almost begged, his hair whipping in the wind. "Was I to _let_ her love me? To let myself love her? I'm a werewolf, I'm dealing with one of the most dangerous men in Britain, who sees a werewolf bite as a bloody blessing! I _cannot_ love her, not in this world that is so cruel to those like me. This isn't something I can drag her into."

"The world is kind to those who are good, Remus." Arthur's voice was steady and pacing. "There will be justice for all of us."

"What if there is no justice?" He laughs, ice making a cloud before his face. "What, then? Do I let someone as vile as Greyback run and kill just because he believes he is right? Do I let someone so innocent as Dora lose herself?"

He rises, and looks at the snow crusting on trees beyond.

"There is no justice for me in this life." He whispers to the barren landscape. "I have thought, and I have read but all that has… salvaged me… is nothing. There is absolutely nothing for me."

"Our world is cruel as it is magical." Arthur places a hand on his shoulder, before turning to walk back into the house. "There will be something ahead for you both. You have to wait."

In that moment, irrevocably, extremely, terribly – he misses Sirius. So Remus walks to the barrier and spins on the spot, praying that Tonks would be in her flat and she would let him into her warmth. Only for tonight.

"Why are you here?" She asked abruptly. "I thought you'd be with the Weasleys, or at the pack or something. Or did you feel pity for me, poor girl spending Christmas alone?"

"Let me in, please." He finds his courage and strength sapped, and feels as though he may grasp onto Tonks and take her with him. Where, Remus doesn't know, but somewhere. She lets him in, and he stares at her dumbly, opening his mouth to start but she cuts him off.

"Don't say anything. Watch a film with me." Tonks pointed to the old television set in the corner, covered with a lurid purple cloth. "You said, remember? On our first date, that you'd watch a Muggle film with me. So let's do it."

"Gone With the Wind, yes." Remus murmured, still staring at her. How could someone like this _still_ like him enough to watch such a beautiful film with him. "Let's see if we can… figure out how to make the television work."

"Bit racist, innit?" Ten minutes in, Remus regretted thinking Tonks was all things bright and beautiful. She was a bloody garden gnome, a gremlin, and this was her fifth comment in ten minutes.

"Well, yes." Remus shrugged. "But you have to consider this was about sixty years ago almost. Muggles were significantly less advanced at this time."

"And this fellow has the _ugliest_ moustache I have _ever_ seen," she whined, slapping Remus' thigh. "He looks like he forgot to shave a tiny line above his upper lip, but not like that Hitler bloke… horizontal like. Man, Muggles are weird. I like the girl though, she's pretty."

"She's like you." Remus said quietly. "A lot like you."

"How so?"

He could not help it then. Her upturned face, cheeks flushed with the snow and the cold. She looked too much like Scarlett from the film, longing and loveless, and he too was longing and loveless – so he presses his lips against hers. Remus did not pull away from the kiss this time, instead kissing slow lines down her neck, into the swell of her breasts. He does not know why he picks her up, still kissing her as her legs wind around his waist, carrying her into the bedroom he knew so well it may have been his own, and as she lays back on the bed looking at him with half-lidded eyes he forgets himself. Remus kicks the door shut, unbuckling his pants as Dora touched herself through her skirt, and he kneeled over her on the bed, grabbing her hands.

"I'm in charge, Dora," he whispers to her, eyes glinting. "Don't touch yourself unless I say so."

He unbuttons her shirt, kissing slowly down, down, down to where her hips reached up to meet his parted lips and crashed onto the bed as he explored her crevices with his tongue. He looks up again, mouth wet with the taste of her, and pushes her thighs downward, takes her nipples in his hands.

"What do you feel for me?" he urges Tonks, rolling her breasts in his palms, squeezing the tips. "Tell me what you feel for me."

"Make me." Tonks snarls. "Make me tell you, bastard."

Remus grasps her shoulders, pulls her up to him so she was looking in his eyes and kisses her again, roughly, with teeth scraping across her lips. He enters her, beginning slowly but the room was hot and sweaty and his strokes get faster and faster until he pulled out, eyes flashing.

"Tell me you are in love with me, you wretch." He mutters, rearing over her like a wild thing. "Tell me you would do anything for me. With me."

"Like hell I will!"

He moves backwards, turns Tonks over and enters her from behind as she throws her head back – begs his name. He feels wanted, by this young girl with the longing and loveless eyes, and he holds onto her waist with both hands as he timed his thrusts to her begging.

"I love you –" she chokes out finally, triumphantly rather than defeatedly. Tonks spins around to look at him, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders and her eyes wide. She was laughing softly, sweat glistening on her cheeks as she raised her hand to his face, kissed him softly. "You know it, you know I love you."

"As do I," he murmurs, lying back on the bed. "Get on top. And look me in the eyes every second."

She obeys him, and when he comes, she is on top of him – staring into his eyes before bending down to kiss him softly beside the mouth, before pulling off and lying next to him. This is the happiness he had craved, but at what cost? At what cost is he willing to have her? For what cost would he be willing to lose her? In that moment, breathless and sweating, Remus feels frighteningly like Greyback. Frighteningly angry with all the _greater goods_ , be it Voldemort's, or Dumbledore's, or the Muggles'. Because in none of these worlds could he have her, in all of those worlds they were destined to split apart like a jagged rock on a cliffside.

"I missed this," Tonks laughs breathlessly. "I missed you."

"As do I," Remus admits, turning onto his elbow to look at her. He smooths hair back from her flushed face and decides to act even more like Greyback. "And I will have to leave. Soon. And it will have to be permanent. And I'm a selfish bastard, Dora, but let's forget that today, shall we? Let's just take today like we took all those days back last year – so tell me where you want to go."

x

"You know, when I asked you where you wanted to go, I assumed you'd say Cheddar Gorge, or at worst the Orkney Islands. Like any normal person." Remus sighed resignedly, wiping sweat from his brow and glaring jealously at Tonks' tank top and shorts. "Which person in their right mind wants to go to _India_ on a day trip I cannot understand."

"I want to see the Taj Mahal, you fuck," Tonks aggressively shoved aside another tourist trying to peer at the large map, and grabbed Remus by the hand towards it. "And it isn't _my_ fault you want to wear your prissy professor outfit to India. Plus, it took literally two minutes via Apparition."

"You forget the Wizarding Border Control," Remus murmured darkly. "Why that fellow thought I was smuggling in _cigarettes_ I cannot bloody understand. He was going to do a probe on me!"

"Truly, a sight I want to see." Tonks snorted. "Right, the tour guides are way too expensive so it looks like you and I are going to have to wing this shit. We're in Delhi, and now we're going to find the Taj Mahal. So go on, do the gender normative shit and find the way."

Had it been anyone other than Tonks, they would have a loafer lodged very far up their unmentionables at this point.

"Hi, excuse me sir." Remus gingerly tapped a man wearing a shirt reaching down to his knees and loose white pants – local attire, he knew. "Do you think you could tell me where the Taj Mahal is?"

"Oh yes." The man shook his head, and Remus attributed the incongruous gesture to being lost in translation. "Yes, the Taj Mahal is right in the eyes of my wife. The beautiful features that mark her face and the –"

"I mean the building, Jesus." Tonks cut in, knowing that Remus would politely spend an hour listening to a poem about the stranger's wife. "Listen, the _Taj Mahal_ , my friend and I want to go have a look. So please tell us where the hell it is."

"Down the street." The man rolled his eyes. "God, I thought you English had enough of looking at that the two hundred years you were here. Still the same, I see, unwilling to listen to our voices and poetry."

"Cheers." Remus dragged Tonks down the road before she got embroiled in an argument. "Let's go find this building and do whatever you want to do with it and _get back to England in one piece_."

The two wandered down the raggedy street, barely missing getting knocked over by a rickshaw, and looked at a dingy white building in the shape of a prison.

"This is _not_ the bloody Taj Mahal." Remus said measuredly, his eye twitching. "If someone, and I mean you, Dora, tries to tell me that this frightful disaster is the jewel of India, I will go through full werewolf initiation and murder someone."

"Uh…shit." Tonks started laughing, pointing to a tiny placard under a gigantic gaudy sign that proclaimed the name of the 'monument.' "It says it's a museum dedicated to replicas of the items in the real Taj… which is in Agra… an hour away by train. And it's closed for bereavement, apparently. I fucking love this, you complete mess, I thought you knew about the Taj Mahal!"

" _Reading_ about the Taj Mahal," Remus sighed, entering the building with a long-suffering glare at his lover and a smack to the 'closed for bereavement' sign. "Is entirely different from locating the damn place in a city where nearly every single street has some variation of Gandhi in its name. How many streets can you name after one fellow? Also, believe me, this is no museum, this is a cheap tourist trap. That coffin is made of bloody plastic!"

"Ah, I must correct you there," Tonks said prissily, her nose in the tourist guide. "The streets aren't just named after old man Gandhi, they're named after India's political family – who are also named Gandhi. Wizarding blood in them too, apparently, that's how they got to be Prime Ministers throughout. Also, the coffin is _not_ plastic."

She knocked on it, producing a curiously hollow sound.

"What sort of place would have a coffin as the first exhibit?!" Tonks exclaimed.

"Dora, please stop knocking on the coffin," Remus begged. "We're not even supposed to be in this disgrace to architecture."

"I only knocked on it once!" Tonks cried, throwing her hands up. "That isn't me! Fuck, Remus, it's coming from inside the coffin, shit, we've disturbed some sleeping Indian spirit that's going to string our intestines on the ceiling!"

"An apt revenge for colonialism," Remus hissed, eyes wide. "But no, you're wrong – footsteps. In a closed museum. It's the security guard, and we're going to spend the night in an Indian prison and believe me when I say that is worse than having your entrails strung up on the ceiling."

"Get in," Tonks pushed the lid of the coffin to the side and hopped inside. Remus, cursing the day he had ever met Tonks, cursing the day he agreed to join the Order, cursing the day of his existence, gingerly stepped in and lay on top of her. The lid slid shut and they were entrapped together, in a position Remus thought would be polite to refer to as 'uncomfortable' and more accurately, like being trapped in the birth canal.

"Well, at least this is a familiar position," Tonks snorted from under him. "Although your giant foot is crushing my toe."

"Dora, dear," Remus whispered. "Your hand feels like it could use a bit of moisturiser."

"Remus. Love." Dora inhaled, shuddering. "That isn't my hand."

After a prolonged feminine scream that Remus swore didn't come from him, three bodies rolling out of a coffin, and a long explanation to a terrified security guard who saw two pale bodies emerge from the coffin along with his deceased mother in law – the duo managed to finally take the train to the Taj Mahal, and the right one at that. It was worth it, Remus decided, loosely clasping Tonks' hand as they removed their shoes to enter the monument. The beauty of the lurid Indian evening, the heat cooling around them, and the polished marble walls of the tomb. This was a Christmas he would look back on, on cold nights in the dingy Birmingham bar, his lover beside him in a foreign country – feeling so terrifyingly ordinary. Feeling so much like how Greyback must have felt once.

"These walls are carved with the ninety-nine names of God," Remus tells her, running his finger across the carvings. "Muggles. They're strange, and rather quirky – but they can be beautiful sometimes. They have their moments of wonderfulness, of poetry, of beauty."

"And," Tonks looked up at him, her eyes suddenly filling with tears that spilt to touch her cheeks. "He loved her enough to build this, all of this for her – in her name. Where it stood for centuries, and even the British who tore down anything in India of value did not dare to touch this. Damn it, Remus, I know it makes me sound like such a girl – but what I wouldn't give for a love like that."

"He loved her the most in all the world," Remus moved closer to her, tracing the path of tears with a light thumb. "Enough that he wanted the moon to reflect on her nightly, enough that he wanted the world to come here every day and gaze at what he had built in her name. Enough that he would give the world to have her again, but that could not happen – so he built this world around her body."

He inhaled slowly, the scent of jasmine flowers in the air and in her hair.

"You say you want to be like Nur Jahan, with a lover who would build a monument for her departed body." Remus laughs softly, his lips touching the darkness of her hairline. "But I could not bear it. I could not be Shah Jahan, who has to wait nightly for a love who is entombed behind him. Who has to spend his life without her touch, Dora, I could not bear it – I cannot bear it now. You forget that when Shah Jahan constructed this building, when he left to go home at night – he locks her in behind him. I could never bear that, and I would give the world to kiss you, but I will not kiss you now, because this room is for another set of lovers whose fate I hope we will never share."

He leads her out, and the tourists are milling around and there are crickets and children chirping in the air but he kisses her softly on the lips.

"I will treasure this day more than you will ever know," Remus tells her, her hand clasped in his. "I can't – I can't come back to you, and you can't run after me but today was ours."

"Yes," Tonks finally smiles, looking up at the building. "Today was ours."

"Also," she adds as an afterthought as they take their last glances at the building. "In this light, it rather looks like a giant breast."

x

But winter drags on into a biting February, and Greyback is wild eyed and adamant. Tensions rose in the Birmingham bar, fights broke out on an almost daily basis that nearly always ended in bloodshed. Voldemort's word was spreading, and his promise of blood inviting – and it was all the werewolves could do to keep to their half-hearted, tentative ideology of the nonexistence of blood purity and kill only who they pleased rather than who others wanted killed. But still, though the sides had not formed, murder and turning is at an all-time high, perhaps even encouraged by the rampant Death Eaters and their pillaging across the country.

"Lupin, listen." Greyback holds out a hand to stop his shadow. "You stay watch, and I'll attack him."

"It isn't full moon," Remus asked, confused. They were standing outside the archetypal middle class house in Dorking, with a couple of dogs tied outside and faint nightlights in a window. "Are you threatening a Ministry officer? Because you'll certainly need a better disguise than this, Greyback. The Ministry's sure to drag you in if you go right in and bare your teeth at this worker."

"Just keep fuckin' watch, mate," Greyback snarls, rolling his eyes. "Get your wand out, and shoot the killing curse if _anyone_ other than the person I'm dealing with comes out of the house, right?"

Like hell I will, Remus thinks as the werewolf creeps into the garden and he waits behind the wall. But his blood suddenly grows cold as he realizes who Greyback is honing in on – a boy, no more than four or five, dressed in a red cape and a toy wand that he brandished at the dogs. His hands dripping with sweat, he stands frozen, mouth dry and Greyback soundlessly grabs the child from behind and bites him on the throat so the boy did not scream. Dumbledore's words sing in Remus' head like a clanging, macabre nursery rhyme as Greyback walks with the bleeding boy tossed over his shoulder, a faint gurgling rising from his frail throat.

"We're leaving, let's go." Greyback snapped, the child still on his shoulder like a rag doll. "And keep your damn wand out, mind."

"Wh-what are you planning to do?" Remus despised this helplessness, this lack of words. He despised the 'greater good', because he did not give a shit about the war at this moment – all he wished to do was tear Greyback's own throat out and coldly look him in the eyes. "Why wouldn't you leave the child back there?"

"Fuck that," Greyback snorted, walking a few paces ahead of Remus back through the woods. "That's not message enough. We're going to take the kid. The next full moon, a free for all. Who turns him first gets to raise the bastard – if he lives. And damn, we'll raise him enough that he goes back and kills the pompous Ministry worker parents by himself."

"Ah, a long-term plan," Remus grits his teeth and looks at the boy who was facing Remus, his throat bleeding out and his eyes pleading. A child used to a life of luxury, two parents in the ministry, a large house. He would not last a day in the dirty bar, let alone the full moon. And if he survives? What a life. What a life would he lead, surrounded by grime and hate and war, raised to tear the throat out of his own parents. And then? If the war ended? A life on the streets, of a criminal, cursed to die and resurrect every month. And his eyes, the boy's almost-turquoise eyes were pleading. Knowing. So, Remus closes his eyes and raises his wand shoulder height – and whatever is left of his heart crumbles into dust and a flash of green light.

"Fuck!" Greyback swore, dropping the child onto the ground where he crumpled like paper. "Stopped breathing. Bastard."

"It's not his fault he couldn't stand the wound," Remus murmured through gritted, lying teeth. He shoved his wand back into his pocket where he felt the wood crack, as if it knew the gravity of what it had just done. "You can't blame the world for everything, Greyback."

"Yeah?" Greyback's eyes flashed. "Yeah? Watch me, Lupin. Watch me blame your fucking wizarding world, and the fucking Muggle world for everything."

He laughed bitterly.

"Leave the kid here. We're close enough that the parents would find him if they search proper." Greyback stalks ahead, and Remus follows, determined not to look at the life he took. "Damn it, Lupin – I wouldn't have killed him. I never kill."

A fist slams against a neighbouring tree.

Splinters, Remus thinks deliriously.

"I _live_ to make people live like us," Greyback spits, and glares at Remus, his eyes fiery. He looks wolfish far too much of the time, but in his anger and wildness and cruelty, he looked terrifyingly human. The ugliness of man overshadowing the wolf. "Murder? That's not my bloody style. I've lived among Muggles, Lupin, enough to know that murder is something their basest fucking hearts crave. Not me. I don't give a shit, but – that kid could have grown up thinking like me. That kid could have grown up part of the pack."

That kid would grow up a murderer, Remus thinks, but a string of doubt attaches itself. He doesn't know how he got home, but home is apparently outside Tonks' flat – the wind whistling in his ears and his heart thudding in his chest. He raises a hand to knock, his mind full of a murdered boy (his own hands, his own hands had taken a life from a child) and no thought to the lost pride he faced by turning up at his lover's door shaking and freezing. Dora opens the door, her living room yellow with light and her hair up in a bun, a dressing gown loose around her shoulders. It was so painfully domestic, that Remus wants to forget his mission and the world, and he steps inside.

"Why?" she asks flatly, shutting the door behind her. "It's been over two months, not a word from you. So why now, Remus?"

He looks at her, stepping closer cautiously and opening his arms. He needs touch. To prove that he was human. Not feral. Not Greyback. She steps into his arms and is enveloped by them, taken into the folds of his shirt that crumpled when they used to be unfailingly crisp. His hair was windswept and falling across the back of his neck, his eyes too dark for his waxy skin.

"I don't know where to go," he murmurs into her neck. "I've got nowhere to go."

Tonks thinks about slapping him, and going off into a tirade about self-pity. But she draws back and studies his face, and with a soft touch, leads him into her bedroom.

"I killed a child," Remus admits, straight away, looking into her eyes. He wishes for fear and disgust to materialize. He deserved it. "I told you, Dora, I told you. From the moment I kissed you, I told you, I could not love you. This is why. I was right, and I allowed myself to be caught up in this, but I had been right – because look at my hands now!"

He raises pale fingers feverishly, and flinches as Tonks' takes them in hers.

"How?" She asked him, far too calmly. "How did it happen? A full moon? An accident?"

"Oh, if only it had been an accident," he mutters darkly, looking almost deranged. He takes his fingers from hers. "It was on purpose. I killed him with my wand, Dora, a child of five. I looked him in the eye, and – "

"No, don't –" She whispers, her eyes widening. Ah, at last. Fear.

"I looked him in the eyes and shot the killing curse, Dora," Remus all but snarled, still staring into her eyes.

"Why?" She asks then, her fingers defiantly snaking into his again.

"Why?" Remus sounded almost confused. "Are you asking me _why_ I killed a five-year-old? Why?"

"Yes." She said bluntly, and brought up a hand to place on his neck. He shivered.

"Greyback had bitten his throat." Remus exhales, shakily. "He was about to take him back to the pack – a sort of – bloody _free for all_ at the next full moon. See if we could turn the child or kill him. A game, you see? Ha! And – and if he lived, he would live in that disgusting hole, trained to kill or be killed. Trained to kill his own parents, the ones we stole him from and dragged into the bowels of society. And I raised my wand, and I looked him in his pleading eyes, Dora. The kid knew exactly what he was going to be taken to, and he was pleading, and his eyes were the brightest blue I had ever seen. I killed him then, and – we left him lying in the woods like a forgotten toy."

His hands shook, and she took them in hers again, pressed the palms against her face.

"Remus, do you trust me?" She asks suddenly.

"If not you, then who?" He admits bitterly, the heat from her face warming his icy fingers.

"Then lie down with me, here. I swear I won't kiss you – just lie with me." Tonks draws him into the bed to lay next to her, pressing against her body, his face in the crook of her neck and his arm over her shoulder. He clasped her to himself, and felt unworthy of even that, of even being near innocence again let alone holding her as if she belonged to him.

"You had no choice. My poor, poor man." She repeats into his hair, carding fingers through it to his neck. It is only when she hears his breathing, far too wrong for serenity, that she realizes Remus is crying. Quietly, bitingly, as though his heart would break. She draws back to look at his tortured eyes, trace his clenched jawline. She wants to hold him like a lover, absorb the pain – but this was not for them, not any longer.

"I didn't even know his name," Remus chokes, burying his head in her neck again to contain the intensity of his grief and the shuddering of his shoulders. "I-I knew _nothing_ about his past, and I extinguished his future."

"You had no choice," She repeats, and holds him closer. Not quite like a lover, but almost.

"I love you," Remus said suddenly, shattering her efforts. "I love you with all my heart, or whatever is left of it. You are everything. And I am _so_ sorry."

She doesn't reply.

x

"You swore," Remus' eyes glittered, standing over the bent body of Bill Weasley. "You swore you would not switch sides, you swore you had _no_ sides. You're a traitor like the rest of them, you have no _commitment,_ as you call it – to our kind."

"But that's where you're wrong, Lupin," Greyback stepped over Bill's body (for a haunting second, Remus thinks of the five-year-old), and sidles far too close into Remus' personal space. "I'm in this for me, as you never were. I'm in this because of the flesh promised, the smell of beautiful young girls. I'm in this to make more of us, a cause which you've never been really fucking dedicated to, isn't it?"

He gets even closer to Remus, strokes his hair in an almost fatherly manner.

"I've told you, Lupin," he snarls, his breath clouding around them. "Nobody stabs me in the back twice. But, you bastard, I won't kill you. I'll lock you and your girl in a room, and I'll wait till the full moon – and… that's a million times worse than killing you, isn't it, boy?"

"Get the fuck away, Greyback," Remus spat, shoving him off him distastefully. "No morals, absolutely none! That's fine with you, but the disturbing capability to join Voldemort at the slightest beck and call? You're just like Wormtail."

"Sure," Greyback leans against the wall, watches as Remus lifts Bill into a half-standing position. "Sure, Lupin. You're saying that as if you didn't go sell your soul to another nutter who believes in a _greater good_. Two sides of the same bloody coin, aren't we – you and I?"

No, Remus decides, hefting Bill into the hospital wing. He would not be like Greyback, he was nothing like Greyback. How could he be proud of murder, when the sight of the child's pleading eyes ripped him within like a band-aid within his insides? He is nothing like Greyback, he convinces himself again in the hospital wing as Tonks grabs his collar and screams at him in front of his former students. Oh, she could teach the stars to shine, this one could – she would fly right up at the moon and screech at the stars till they shone exactly how she wanted them to. A pretty young thing, spoilt by her parents, spoilt by the world, and how he wishes she would be spoilt by him. Her dark hair dazzled him even when it was not lurid pink, her fingers carding in his hair in the hollows of the night, no – Remus was nothing like Greyback, he knows. He loves, and loves far too deeply, and far more innocently than Greyback's twisted version of romantic love.

"Go after her," Molly tells him, drying her eyes on her sleeve as she clings weakly to Fleur. The eyes around him were encouraging and urging, even the children who were completely unaware of their entanglement (except possibly Ginny – she had always had a knowing glance) seemed almost to be begging him, clinging onto the final promise of love in a crumbling world. The melodrama in the room both disgusted and inspired him, and as he stormed through the door and into the dark corridor he finally feels _deserving_ of her. Demanding her, needing her, and returning to her like a hand that always reaches for the other.

"I told you," he pants, stumbling up behind her as she sat on the steps outside the Entrance Hall. Spots of colour rose high on her cheeks, nothing so exquisite as a woman scorned, and she rolls her eyes at him.

"I told you," he continues undeterred. "That you were like Scarlett o' Hara. And you asked how so, but I didn't tell you. It's because you're running, all the time, but not running away. That's me, running away from everything I love, out of fear and disgust toward myself."

"And what?" Tonks shoots back, rising from the steps to look him in the eye. "What am I then?"

"Like Scarlett, you run towards what you think you love. And you never…" Remus laughs then, thinking of the time Tonks literally chased him around Grimmauld Place with a broken heel. "You never stop running, not even when your heart is strung up and weary, not even when your feet are cracked and bleeding. The more I run from you, the more you run to me, and it's infinite, this capability to keep moving. And I love that, and I fear it slightly – that tendency to blindly love and pursue, but I love it. And you."

"You said that the last time, Remus," Tonks reminds him, a corner of her lip turning down, her eyebrows furrowing as she clutched his hand convulsively. "You said that you loved me, and you ran."

"But you caught me," Remus says and smiles, genuinely. "Look at your hand and mine, without knowing it, you've caught me. And perhaps it would be more convincing if I told you I have no intention of running again, because I don't belong with the werewolves, or those who consider blood over heart. And perhaps it would be more convincing if I –"

He gets to his knees.

"Told you in this manner. With my hand in yours, and without a ring, but spontaneity was our friend from the beginning when we decided to run off to Madame Tussauds." Remus pressed his lips to her fingertips. "If I told you I wish you to marry me, to go from feuding to forever in one go – could you do that? Could you tie yourself down to me so neither of us run anywhere?"

"What the hell do you think I was waiting like a dog for, you bastard?" Tonks asks, eyes glimmering. She pulls him up, and the lack of a ring was possibly the most amusing thing to happen to her, and she kisses him, repeatedly, feverishly, her hair falling lighter and lighter as the night lifted from the sky and the war fell into place around them. She could teach the stars to shine, this one, but it would be a far easier task lighting an extinguished star than to make someone like Remus see his own beauty, and his own light. It is far easier for a star to shine if it knows how bright it is, and as she intertwines her fingers between his, Tonks knows that she would make him realize that if it's the last thing she does.

This too then, has come together.

 **That's it for Half Blood Prince! The next chapter would be a busy one, with a wedding, a baby, and more turmoil for these two. Do, do leave your thoughts in the reviews if you could, I would genuinely appreciate it! x**


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